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This naturally alarmed me, but I boldly asked her and she consented with a stiff bow: we performed a polka together and I restored her to her seat, feeling as though I had crossed from Siracusa to Valletta in a storm, more frightened than hurt, it is true, but glad it was over, especially as I now considered myself entitled to introduce the subject of dancing with Brancaccia.
"Indeed, signorina, I have heard that the climate of Siracusa is very delightful." "It doesn't look it," returned Patsy; "but it may improve." The interior of the hotel was comfortable, though, however bleak the weather might be outside.
And speaking of the first manner, it shall be made evident by two Examples, the one ancient, the other moderne, without entring otherwise into the justice or merit of this part; for I take it that these are sufficient for any body that is forc'd to follow them. Agathocles the Sicilian, not of a private man onely, but from a base and abject fortune, got to be King of Siracusa.
He of a private man, became Prince of Siracusa, nor knew he any other ayd of fortune than the occasion: for the Siracusans being oppress'd, made choyce of him for their Captain, whereupon he deserv'd to be made their Prince: and he was of such vertue even in his private fortune, that he who writes of him, sayes, he wanted nothing of reigning, but a Kingdom; this man extinguish'd all the old soldiery, ordaind the new; left the old allyances, entertained new; and as he had friendship, and soldiers that were his own, upon that ground he was able to build any edifice; so that he indured much trouble in gaining, and suffered but little in maintaining.
This waie Alexander of Epirus used againste the Illirans and Leptenus of Siracusa against the Carthaginers and bothe to the one and to the other, the devise came to passe most happely.
Sometimes they really do want to learn English and some of them even make attempts to pick up a few words and actually retain them. I went once from Siracusa to Malta at the end of December; it was abominably rough, and my luggage was thrown about in the cabin with such violence that some of the things slipped out of my bag.
I was too sea-sick to be sure I had picked them all up, but afterwards discovered that the only thing left behind was my new diary for the next year. On returning from Valletta to Siracusa about a fortnight later, I asked the steward if he had found my diary and it was produced by the cabin-boy who must have been a youth of considerable energy and enterprise.
And so, after three nights in the train, they had opened their eyes to the quiet sea near Reggio, to the clustering houses under the mountains of Messina, to the high-prowed fishermen's boats painted blue and yellow, to the coast-line which wound away from the straits till it stole out to that almost phantasmal point where Siracusa lies, to the slope of Etna, to the orange gardens and the olives, and the great, dry water courses like giant highways leading up into the mountains.
Eighteen miles farther they passed Leontinoi, which in ancient days dared to rival Siracusa itself, and an hour later the train skirted the bay and Capo Santa Panagia and slowly came to a halt in that city which for centuries dominated all the known world and was more powerful and magnificent in its prime than Athens itself Syracuse.
In Sicily it practically never rains during the summer; the sea water is collected in large, open pans, being raised by means of the screw which has been in use all over the island for nearly twenty-two centuries, ever since Archimedes invented it to remove the water from the hold of one of Hiero's ships at Siracusa.
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