necessity. I counselled with him whether it might not be safer to take in sail and drift along. But from this he dissented. Time enough to take in sail when we knew what shore we were coming to. He had no kedge or grapple or cord, indeed, that would pretend to hold this boat against this gale. We would beach her, if it pleased the Virgin; and if we could not, — shaking his head, — why, that would please the Virgin, too. And so Euroclydon hurried us on to Sybaris. The sun rose, O how magnificently! Is there anywhere to see sunrise like the Mediterranean? And if one may not be on the top of Katahdin, is there any place for sunrise like the very level of the sea? Already the Calabrian mountains of our western horizon were gray against the sky. One or another of us was forward all the time, trying to make out by what slopes the hills descended to the sea. Was it cliff of basalt, or was it reedy swamp, that was to receive us. I insisted at last on his reducing sail. For I felt sure that he was driving on under a sort of fatality which made him dare the worst. I was wholly right, for the boat now rose easier on the water, and was much more dry. Perhaps the wind flagged a little as the sun rose. At all events, he took courage, which I had never lost. I made his boy find us some oranges. I made them laugh by eating their cold polenta with them. I even made him confess, when I called him aft and sent Battista forward, that the shore we were nearing looked low. For we were near enough now to see stone pines and chestnut-trees. Did anybody see the towers of Sybaris? Not a tower! But, on the other hand, not a gnome, witch, Norna's Head, or other intimation of the underworld. The shore looked like many other Italian shores. It looked not very unlike what we Yankees call saltmarsh. At all events, we should not break our heads against a wall! Nor will I draw out the story of our anxie ties, varying as the waves did on which we rose and fell so easily. As she forged on, it was clear at last that to some wanderers, at least, Sybaris had some hospitality. A long, low spit made out into the sea, with never a house on it, but brown with stormworn shrubs, above the line of which were the stone-pines and chestnuts which had first given character to the shore. Hard for us, if we had been flung on the outside of this spit. But we were not. Else I had not been writing here to-day. We passed it by fifty fathom clear. Of course under its lee was our harbor. Battista let go the halyards in a moment, and the wet sails came rattling down. The old man, the boy, Battista, and I seized the best sweeps he had left. Two of us at each, working on the same side, we brought her head round as fast as she would bear it in that fearful sea. Inch by inch we wrought along to the smoother water, and breathed free at last, as we came under the partial protection of the friendly shore. Battista and his brother then hauled up the sail enough to give such headway to the boat as we thought our sweeps would control. And we crept along the shore for an hour, seeing nothing but reeds, and now and then a distant buffalo, when at last a very hard knock on a rock the boy ahead had not seen under water started the planks so that we knew that was dangerous play; and, without more solicitation, the old man beached the boat in a little cove where the reeds gave place for a trickling stream. I told them they might land or not, as they pleased. I would go ashore and get assistance or information. The old man clearly thought I was going to ask my assistance from the father of lies himself. But he was resigned to my will,-said he would wait for my return. I stripped, and waded ashore with my clothes upon my head, dressed as quickly as I could, and pushed up from the beach to the low upland. Clearly enough I was in a civilized country. Not that there was a gallows, as the old joke says; but there were tracks in the shingle of the beach showing where wheels had been, and these led me to a cart-track between high growths of that Mediterranean reed which grows all along in those low flats. There is one of the reeds on the hooks above my gun in the hall as you came in. I followed up the track, but without seeing barn, house, horse, or man, for a quarter of a mile, perhaps, when behold, "Can the scenery from the window. it be possible," said I, "that the traditions of Sybaris really linger here?" I sat quite in the front of the car, so that I could see the fate of my first friend IIλpov, - the full car. In a very few minutes it switched off from our track, leaving us still to pick up our complement, and then I saw that it dropped its mules, and was attached, on a side track, to an endless chain, which took it along at a much greater Not the footprint of a man! as to rapidity, so that it was soon out of sight. Robinson Crusoe ; Not a gallows and man hanging! as in the sailor story above named ; But a railroad track! Evidently a horse-railroad. "A horse-railroad in Italy!" said I, aloud. "A horse-railroad in Sybaris! It must have changed since the days of the coppersmiths!" And I flung myself on a heap of reeds which lay there, and waited. In two minutes I heard the fast step of horses, as I supposed; in a minute more four mules rounded the corner, and a "horse-car" came dashing along the road. I stepped forward and waved my hand, but the driver bowed respectfully, pointed back, and then to a board on top of his car, and I read, as he dashed by me, the word Πλήρον, displayed full above him; as one may read Complet on a Paris omnibus. Now Πλήρον is the Greek for full. "In Sybaris they do not let the horserailroads grind the faces of the passengers," said I. "Not so wholly changed since the coppersmiths." And, within the minute, more quadrupedantal noises, more mules, and another car, which stopped at my signal. I entered, and found a dozen or more passengers, sitting back to back on a seat which ran up the middle of the car, as you might ride in an Irish jauntingIn this way it was impossible for the conductor to smuggle in a standing passenger, impossible for a passenger to catch cold from a cracked window, and possible for a passenger to see car. I addressed my next neighbor on the subject, in Greek which would have made my fortune in those old days of the pea-green settees. But he did not seem to make much of that, but in sufficiently good Italian told me, that, as soon as we were full, we should be attached in the same way to the chain, which was driven by stationary engines five or six stadia apart, and so indeed it proved. We picked up one or two market-women, a young artist or two, and a little boy. When the child got in, there was a nod and smile on people's faces; my next neighbor said to me, pov, as if with an air of relief; and sure enough, in a minute more, we were flying along at a 2.20 pace, with neither mule nor engine in sight, stopping about once a mile to drop passengers, if there was need, and evidently approaching Sybaris. All along now were houses, each with its pretty garden of perhaps an acre, no fences, because no cattle at large. I wonder if the Vineland people know they caught that idea from Sybaris! All the houses were of one story, stretching out as you remember Pliny's villa did, if Ware and Van Brunt ever showed you the plans, or as Erastus Bigelow builds factories at Clinton. I learned afterwards that stair-builders and slaveholders are forbidden to live in Sybaris by the same article in the fundamental law. This accounts, with other things, for the vigorous health of their women. I supposed that this was a mere suburban habit, and, though the houses came nearer and nearer, yet, as no two houses touched in a block, I did not know we had come into the city till all the passengers left the car, and the conductor courteously told me we were at our journey's end. When this happens to you in Boston, and you leave your car, you find yourself huddled on a steep sloping sidewalk, under the rain or snow, with a hundred or more other passengers, all eager, all wondering, all unprovided for. But I found in Sybaris a large glass-roofed station, from which the other lines of neighborhood cars radiated, in which women and even little children were passing from route to to route, under the guidance of civil and intelligent persons, who, strange enough, made it their business to conduct these people to and fro, and did not consider it their duty to insult the traveller. For a moment my mind reverted to the contrast at home; but not long. As I stood admiring and amused at once, a bright, brisk little fellow stepped up to me, and asked what my purpose was, and which way I would go. He spoke in Greek first, but, seeing I did not catch his meaning, relapsed into very passable Italian, quite as good as mine. I told him that I was shipwrecked, and had come into town for assistance. He expressed sympathy, but wasted not a moment, led me to his chief at an office on one side, who gave me a card with the address of an officer whose duty it was to see to strangers, and said that he would in turn introduce me to the chief of the boat-builders; and then said, as if in apology for his promptness, « Χρὴ ξεῖνον παρεόντα φιλεῖν, ἐθέλοντα δὲ πέμπειν.” "Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest." He called to me a conductor of the red line, said évos, which we translate guest, but which I found in this case means "dead-head," or "free," bowed, and I saw him no more. "Strange country have I come to, indeed," said I, as I thought of the passports of Civita Vecchia, of the indifference of Scollay's Buildings, and of the surliness of Springfield. "And this is Sybaris !" WE sent down a tug to the cove which I indicated on their topographical map, and to the terror of the old fisherman and his sons, to whom I had sent a note, which they could not read, our boat was towed up to the city quay, and was put under repairs. That last thump on the hidden rock was her worst injury, and it was a week before I could get away. It was in this time that I got the information I am now to give, partly from my own observations, partly from what George the Proxenus or his brother Philip told me, more from what I got from a very pleasing person, the wife of another brother, at whose house I used to visit freely, and whose boys, fine fellows, were very fond of talking about America with me. They spoke English very funnily, and like little schoolbooks. The ship-carpenter, a man named Alexander, was a very intelligent person; and, indeed, the whole social arrangement of the place was so simple, that it seemed to me that I got on very fast, and knew a great deal of them in a very short time. I told George one day, that I was surprised that he had so much time to give to me. He laughed, and said he could well believe that, as I had said that I was brought up in Boston. "When I was there," said he, "I could see that your people were all hospitable enough, but that the people who were good for anything were made to do all the work of the vauriens, and really had no time for friendship or hospitality. I remember an historian of yours, who crossed with me, said that there should be a motto stretched across Boston Bay, from one fort to another, with the words, “No admittance, except on business." I did not more than half like this chaffing of Boston, and asked how they managed things in Sybaris. "Why, you see," said he, " we hold pretty stiffly to the old Charondian laws, of which perhaps you know something; here's a copy of the code, if you would like to look over it," and he took one out of his pocket. "We are still large, not extending much beyond the He said that my question cut pretty low down, for that the answer really involved the study of their whole system. "I have thought of it a good deal," said he, "when I have been in St. Petersburg, and in England and America; and as far as I can find out, our peculiarity in everything is, that we respect- I have sometimes thought we almost worshipped — the rights, even the notions or whims, of the individual "How came you to Boston," said I, citizen. With us the first object of the "and when ?" state, as an organization, is to care for the individual citizen, be he man, woman, or child. We consider the state to be made for the better and higher training of men, much as your divines say that the Church is. Instead of our lumping our citizens, therefore, and treating Jenny Lind and Tom Heenan to the same dose of public schooling, instead of saying that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, we try to see that each individual is protected in the enjoyment, not of what the "O, we all have to travel," said George, "if we mean to go into the administration. And I liked administration. I observe that you appoint a foreign ambassador because he can make a good stump speech in Kentucky. But since Charondas's time, training has been at the bottom of our system. And no man could offer himself here to serve on the school committee, unless he knew how other nations managed their schools." "Not if he had himself made school- majority likes, but of what he chooses, books?" said I. so long as his choice injures no other man." "No!" laughed George, "for he might introduce them. With us no professor may teach from a text-book he has made himself, unless the highest council of education order it; and on the same principle we should never choose a bookseller on the school committee. And so, to go back," he said, "when my father found that administration was my passion, he sent me the grand tour. I learned a great deal in America, and am very fond of the Americans. But I never saw one here before." I did not ask what he learned in America, for I was more anxious to learn myself how they administered government in Sybaris. I thought, in one whiff, of Stuart Mill, and of the coppersmiths. "Our horse-railroad system grew out of this theory," continued he. "As long ago as Herodotus, people lived here in houses one story high, with these gardens between. But some generations ago, a young fellow named Apollidorus, who had been to Edinburgh, pulled down his father's house and built a block of what you call houses on the site of it. They were five stories high, had basements, and so on, with windows fore and aft, and, of course, none on the sides. The old fogies looked aghast. But he found plenty of fools to hire them. But the tenants had not been THE INNS at Sybaris are not very in a week, when the Kategoros, district attorney, had him up for taking away from a citizen what he could not restore.' This, you must know, is one of the severest charges in our criminal code. "Of course, it was easy enough to show that the tenants went willingly; he showed dumb-waiters, and I know not what infernal contrivances of convenience within. But he could not show that the tenants had north windows and south windows, because they did not. The government, on their side, showed that men were made to breathe fresh air, and that he could not ventilate his houses as if they were open on all sides; they showed that women were not made to climb up and down ladders, and to live on stages at the tops of them; and he tried in vain to persuade the jury that this climbing was good for little children. He had lured these citizens into places dangerous for health, growth, strength, and comfort. And so he was compelled to erect a statue typical of strength, and a small hospital for infants, as his penalty. That spirited Hercules, which stands in front of the market, was a part of his fine. "Of course, after a decision like this, concentration of inhabitants was out of the question. Every pulpit in Sybaris blazed with sermons on the text, 'Every man shall sit under his vine and under his fig-tree.' Everybody saw that a house without its own garden was an abomination, and easy communication with the suburbs was a necessity. "It was, indeed, easy enough to show, as the city engineer did, that the power wasted in lifting people up, and, for that matter, down stairs, in a five-story house, in one day, would carry all those people I do not know how many miles on a level railroad track in less time. What you call horse-railroads, therefore, became a necessity." I said they made a great row with us. "Yes," said he, "I saw they did. With us the government owns and repairs the track, as you do the track of any common road. We never have difficulty. "You see," he added after a pause, any "with us, if a conductor sprains the ankle of a citizen, it is a matter the state looks after. With you, the citizen must himself be the prosecutor, and virtually, never is. Did you notice a pretty winged Mercury outside the station-house you came to ?" I had noticed it. "That was put up, I don't know how long ago, in the infancy of these things. They took a car off one night, without public notice beforehand. One old man was coming in on it, to his daughter's wedding. He missed his connection out at Little Krastis, and lost half an hour. Down came the Kategoros. The company had taken from a citizen what they could not restore, namely, half an hour." George lighted another cigar, and laughed very heartily. "That's a great case in our reports," he said. "The company ventured to go to trial on it. They hoped they might overturn the old decisions, which were so old that nobody knows when they were made, as old as the dancing horses," said he, laughing. "They said time was not a thing, it was a relation of ideas; that it did not exist in heaven; that they could not be made to suffer because they did not deliver back what no man ever saw, or touched, or tasted. What was half an hour? But the jury was pitiless. A lot of business men, you know, they knew the value of time. What did they care for the metaphysics? And the company was bidden to put up an appropriate statue worth ten talents in front of their station-house, as a reminder to all their people that a citizen's time was worth something." This was George's first visit to me; and it was the first time, therefore, that I observed a queer thing. Just at this point he rose rather suddenly and bade me good evening. I begged him to stay, but had to repeat my invitation twice. His hand was on the handle of the door before he turned back. Then he sat down, and we went on talking; but before long he did the same thing again, and then again. |