SEEKERS in SICILY, by ELIZABETH BISLAND and ANNE HOYT

"He ne'er is crown'd with immortalityWho fears to follow where airy voices lead.""Oh, Persephone, Persephone!... Surely Kor#65533; is in Hell."This is a discouraged voice from the window."Peripatetica, that sounds both insane and improper. Would it fatigue you too much to explain in the vernacular what you are trying, in your roundabout way, to suggest?"Thus Jane, a mere diaphanous mauve cloud, from which the glimmering fire picked out glittering points here and there. When Jane takes...
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"He ne'er is crown'd with immortalityWho fears to follow where airy voices lead.""Oh, Persephone, Persephone!... Surely Kor#65533; is in Hell."This is a discouraged voice from the window."Peripatetica, that sounds both insane and improper. Would it fatigue you too much to explain in the vernacular what you are trying, in your roundabout way, to suggest?"Thus Jane, a mere diaphanous mauve cloud, from which the glimmering fire picked out glittering points here and there. When Jane takes to teagowns she is really very dressy.Peripatetica strolled up and down the dusky drawing-room two or three times, without answering. Outside a raging wind drove furiously before it in the darkness the snow that flew upward in long spirals, like desperate hunted ghosts. Finally she took up a book from the table, and kneeling, to get the light from the logs on the page, began to read aloud.These two were on such kindly terms that either one could read aloud without arousing the other to open violence."Persephone, sometimes called Kor#65533;-" read Peripatetica, "having been seized by Pluto, as she gathered narcissus, and wild thyme, and mint, and the violet into her green kirtle-was carried, weeping very bitterly, into his dark hell. And Demeter, her mother, missing her fair and sweet-curled daughter, sought her through all the world with tears and ravings; the bitter sound and moisture of her grief making a noise as of winter wind and rain. And her warm heart being so cold with pain the blossoms died on her bosom, and her vernal hair was shredded abroad into the air, and all growing things drooped and perished, and her brown benignant face became white as the face of the dead are white--"Peripatetica closed the book, put it back on the table, and drew a hassock under her for a seat."I see," said Jane. "Demeter is certainly passing this way to-night, poor dear! It's a pity she can't realize Persephone, that sweet soul of Spring, will come back. She always does come back.""Yes; but Demeter, the mother-earth, always fears that this time she may not; that Pluto will keep her in hell always. And every time she makes the same outcry about it.""I suppose she always finds her first in Enna," Jane hazarded. "Isn't Enna in Sicily?""Yes, I think so; but I don't know much about Sicily, though everybody goes there nowadays. Let's go there, Jane, and help Demeter find Persephone.""Let's!" agreed Jane, with sympathetic enthusiasm, and they went.* * *Now, being Americans, and therefore accustomed to the most obliging behaviour on the part of the male sex, it never occurred to them that Pluto might be ungallant enough to object to their taking a hand in. But he did-as they might have foreseen would be likely in a person so unmannerly as to snatch lovely daughters from devoted mothers.It began on the ocean. On quite a calm evening a wave, passing from under the side of the ship, threw its crest back-perhaps to look at the stars-and fell head over heels into their open port. Certainly as much as two tons of green and icy Atlantic entered impulsively, and by the time they were dried out and comforted by the tight-corseted, rosy, sympathetic Lemon every object they possessed was a mere bunch of depressed rumples. Throughout the rest of the voyage they presented the unfortunate appearance of having slept in their clothes, including their hats. These last, which they had believed refreshingly picturesque, or coquettish, at starting, had that defiantly wretched aspect displayed by the broody hen after she has been dipped in the rain-barrel to check her too exuberant aversion to race-suicide.That was how Pluto began, and it swiftly went from bad to worse.Three large tourist ships discharged bursting cargoes of humanity upon Naples on one and the same day, and the hotel-keepers rose to their opportunity and dealt guilefully with the horde clamouring as with one voice for food and shelter.