Chapter VIII: Part II (4)

And here was this devout old fisherman confirming the words of Smith's Dictionary, when it said that nobody had been there and returned, for generation upon generation.

At a dozen knots an hour, as things were, I was going to Sybaris! Nor was I many hours from it. For at that moment we cannot have been more than five-and-thirty miles from the beach, where, in less than four hours, Euroclydon flung us on shore.

The memory of the old green settees, and of Hutchinson and Wheeler and the other Latin-school boys, sustained me beneath the calamity which impended. Nor do I think at heart the boys felt so bad as their father about the djins and the devils, the powers of the earth and the powers of the air. Is there, perhaps, in the youthful mind, rather a passion for "seeing the folly" of life a little in that direction? None the less did we join him in rigging out the longest sweep we had aft, lashing it tight under the little rail which we had been leaning on, and trying gentle experiments, how far this extemporized rudder might bring the boat round to the wind. Nonsense the whole. By that time Euroclydon was on us, so that I would never have tried to put her about if we had had the best gear I ever handled, and our experiments only succeeded far enough to show that we were as utterly powerless as men could be. Meanwhile day was just beginning to break. I soothed the old man with such devout expressions as heretic might venture. I tried to turn him from the coming evil to the present 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 salt-marsh. At all events, we should not break our heads against a wall! Nor will I draw out the story of our anxieties, 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 storm-worn 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,--

Not the footprint of a man! as to 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

[Greek: Plêron],

displayed full above him; as one may read _Complet_ on a Paris omnibus.

Now [Greek: Plêron] is the Greek for full. "In Sybaris they do not let the horse-railroads 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 jaunting-car. In 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 the scenery from the window. "Can 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 [Greek: Plêron],--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 rapidity, so that it was soon out of sight. 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, [Greek: Plêron], 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,

"[Greek: Chrê xeiuon pareonta philein, ethelonta de pempein.]"
"Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest."

He called to me a conductor of the red line, said [Greek: Xenos], 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 school-books. 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 very chary about amendments to statutes, so that very little time is spent in legislation; we have no bills at shops, and but little debt, and that is all on honor, so that there is not much account-keeping or litigation; you know what happens to gossips,--gossip takes a good deal of time elsewhere,--and somehow everybody does his share of work, so that all of us do have a good deal of what you call 'leisure.' Whether," he added pensively, "in a world God put us into that we might love each other, and learn to love,--whether the time we spend in society, or the time we spend caged behind our office desks, is the time which should be called devoted to the 'business of life,' that remains to be seen."

"How came you to Boston," said I, "and when?"

"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-books?" said I.

"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.

* * * * *

The inns at Sybaris are not very large, not extending much beyond the compass of a large private house. Mine was kept by a woman. As we sat there, smoking on the piazza, the first evening I was there, I asked George about this horse-railroad management, and the methods they took to secure such personal comfort.

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 citizen. With us the first object of the 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 majority likes, but of what he chooses, so long as his choice injures no other man."

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 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 any difficulty.

"You see," he added after a pause, "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.

At last I was provoked, and said: "What is the custom of your country? Do you have to take a walk every eleven minutes and a quarter?"

George laughed again, and indeed blushed. "Do you know what a bore is?" said he.

"Alas! I do," said I.

"Well," said he, "the universal custom here is, that an uninvited guest, who calls on another man on his own business, rises at the end of eleven minutes, and offers to go. And the courts have ruled, very firmly, that there must be a _bona fide_ effort. We get into such a habit of it, that, with you, I really did it unawares. The custom is as old as Cleisthenes and his wedding. But some of the decisions are not more than two or three centuries old, and they are very funny.

"On the whole," he added, "I think it works well. Of course, between friends, it is absurd, but it is a great protection against a class of people who think their own concerns are the only things of value. You see you have only to say, when a man comes in, that you thank him for coming, that you wish he would stay, or to take his hat or his stick,--you have only to make him an invited guest,--and then the rule does not hold."

"Ah!" said I; "then I invite you to spend every evening with me while I am here."

"Take care," said he; "the Government Almanac is printed and distributed gratuitously from the fines on bores. Their funds are getting very low up at the department, and they will be very sharp on your friends. So you need not be profuse in your invitations."

* * * * *

This conversation was a clew to a good many things which I saw while I was in the city. I never was in a place where there were so many tasteful, pretty little conveniences for everybody. At the quadrants, where the streets cross, there was always a pretty little sheltered seat for four or five people,--shaded, stuffed, dry, and always the morning and evening papers, and an advertisement of the times of boats and trains, for any one who might be waiting for a car or for a friend. Sometimes these were votive offerings, where public spirit had spoken in gratitude. More often they had been ordered at the cost of some one who had taken from a citizen what he could not repay. The private citizen might often hesitate about prosecuting a bore, or a nuisance, or a conceited company officer. But the Kategoroi made no bones about it. They called the citizen as a witness, and gave the criminal a reminder which posterity held in awe. Their point, as they always explained it to me, is, that the citizen's health and strength are essential to the state. The state cannot afford to have him maimed, any more than it can afford to have him drunk or ignorant. The individual, of course, cannot be following up his separate grievances with people who abridge his rights. But the public accuser can and does.

With us, public servants, who know they are public servants, are always obliging and civil. I would not ask better treatment in my own home than I am sure of in Capitol, State-house, or city hall. It is only when you get to some miserable sub-bureau, where the servant of the servant of a creature of the state can bully you, that you come to grief. For instance the State of Massachusetts just now forbids corporations to work children more than ten hours a day. The _corporations_ obey. But the overseers in the rooms, whom the corporations employ, work children eleven hours, or as many as they choose. They would not stand that in Sybaris.

* * * * *

I was walking one day with one of the bright boys of whom I spoke, and I asked him, as I had his father, if I was not keeping him away from his regular occupation. Ought he not be at school?

"No," said he; "this is my off-term."

"Pray, what is that?"

"Don't you know? We only go to school three months in winter and three in summer. I thought you did so in America. I know Mr. Webster did. I read it in his Life."

I was on the point of saying that we knew now how to train more powerful men than Mr. Webster, but the words stuck in my throat, and the boy rattled on.

"The teachers have to be there all the time, except when they go in retreat. They take turns about retreat. But we are in two choroi; I am choros-boy now, James is anti-choros. Choros have school in January, February, March, July, August, September. Next year I shall be anti-choros."

"Which do you like best,--off-term or school?" said I.

"O, both is as good as one. When either begins, we like it. We get rather sick of either before the three months are over."

"What do you do in your off-terms?" said I,--"go fishing?"

"No, of course not," said he, "except Strep, and Hipp, and Chal, and those boys, because their fathers are fishermen. No, we have to be in our fathers' offices, we big boys; the little fellows, they let them stay at home. If I was here without you now, that truant-officer we passed just now would have had me at home before this time. Well, you see they think we learn about business, and I guess we do. I know I do," said he, "and sometimes I think I should like to be a Proxenus when I am grown up, but I do not know."

I asked George about this, the same evening. He said the boy was pretty nearly right about it. They had come round to the determination that the employment of children, merely because their wages were lower than men's, was very dangerous economy. The chances were that the children were over-worked, and that their constitution was fatally impaired. "We do not want any Manchester-trained children here." Then they had found that steady brain-work on girls, at the growing age, was pretty nearly slow murder in the long run. They did not let girls go to school with any persistency after they were twelve or fourteen. After they were twenty, they might study what they chose.

"But the main difference between our schools and yours," said he, "is that your teacher is only expected to hear the lesson recited. Our teacher is expected to teach it also. You have in America, therefore, sixty scholars to one teacher. We do not pretend to have more than twenty to one teacher. We do this the easier because we let no child go to school more than half the time; nor, even with the strongest, more than four hours a day.

"Why," said he, "I was at a college in America once, where, with splendid mathematicians, they had had but one man teach any mathematics for thirty years. And he was travelling in Europe when I was there. The others only heard recitations of those who could learn without being taught."

"I was once there," said I.

* * * * *

The boat's repairs still lingered, and on Sunday little Phil. came round with a note from his mother, to ask if I would go to church with them. If I had rather go to the cathedral or elsewhere, Phil. would show me the way. I preferred to go with him and her together. It was a pretty little church,--quite open and airy it would seem to us,--excellent chance to see dancing vines, or flying birds, or falling rains, or other "meteors outside," if the preacher proved dull or the hymns undevout. But I found my attention was well held within. Not that the preaching was anything to be repeated. The sermon was short, unpretending, but alive and devout. It was a sonnet, all on one theme; that theme pressed, and pressed, and pressed again, and, of a sudden, the preacher was done. "You say you know God loves you," he said. "I hope you do, but I am going to tell you once more that he loves you, and once more and once more." What pleased me in it all was a certain unity of service, from the beginning to the end. The congregation's singing seemed to suggest the prayer; the prayer seemed to continue in the symphony of the organ; and, while I was in revery, the organ ceased; but as it was ordered, the sermon took up the theme of my revery, and so that one theme ran through the whole. The service was not ten things, like the ten parts of a concert, it was one act of communion or worship. Part of this was due, I guess, to this, that we were in a small church, sitting or kneeling near each other, close enough to get the feeling of communion,--not parted, indeed, in any way. We had been talking together, as we stood in the churchyard before the service began, and when we assembled in the church the sense of sympathy continued. I told Kleone that I liked the home feeling of the church, and she was pleased. She said she was afraid I should have preferred the cathedral. There were four large cathedrals, open, as the churches were, to all the town; and all the clergy, of whatever order, took turns in conducting the service in them. There were seven successive services in each of them that Sunday. But each clergyman had his own special charge beside,--I should think of not more than a hundred families. And these families, generally neighbors in the town, indeed, seemed, naturally enough, to grow into very familiar personal relations with each other.

* * * * *

I asked Philip one day how long his brother George would hold his office of host, or Proxenus. Philip turned a little sharply on me, and asked if I had any complaints to make, being, in fact, rather a quick-tempered person. I soothed him by explaining that all that I asked about was the tenure of office in their system, and he apologized.

"He will be in as long as he chooses, probably. In theory, he remains in until a majority of the voters, which is to say the adult men and women, join in a petition for his removal. Then he will be removed at once. The government will appoint a temporary substitute, and order an election of his successor."

"Do you mean there is no fixed election-day?"

"None at all," said Philip. "We are always voting. When we stopped just now I went in to vote for an alderman of our ward, in place of a man who has resigned. I wish I had taken you in with me, though there was nothing to see. Only three or four great books, each headed with the name of a candidate. I wrote my name in Andrew Second's book. He is, on the whole, the best man. The books will be open three months. No one, of course, can vote more than once, and at the end of that time there will be a count, and a proclamation will be made. Then about removal; any one who is dissatisfied with a public officer puts his name up at the head of a book in the election office. Of course there are dozens of books all the time. But unless there is real incapacity, nobody cares. Sometimes, when one man wants another's place, he gets up a great breeze, the newspapers get hold of it, and everybody is canvassed who can be got to the spot. But it is very hard to turn out a competent officer. If in three months, however, at all the registries, a majority of the voters express a wish for a man's removal, he has to go out. Practically, I look in once a week at that office to see what is going on. It is something as you vote at your clubs."

"Did you say women as well as men?" said I.

"O, yes," said Philip, "unless a woman or a man has formally withdrawn from the roll. You see, the roll is the list, not only of voters, but of soldiers. For a man to withdraw, is to say he is a coward and dares not take his chance in war. Sometimes a woman does not like military service, and if she takes her name off I do not think the public feeling about it is quite the same as with a man. She may have things to do at home."

"But do you mean that most of the women serve in the army?" said I.

"Of course they do," said he. "They wanted to vote, so we put them on the roll. You do not see them much. Most of the women's regiments are heavy artillery, in the forts, which can be worked just as well by persons of less as of more muscle if you have enough of them. Each regiment in our service is on duty a month, and in reserve six. You know we have no distant posts."

"We have a great many near-sighted men in America," said I, "who cannot serve in the army."

"We make our near-sighted men work heavy guns, serve in light artillery, or, in very bad cases, we detail them to the police work of the camps," said he. "The deaf and dumb men we detail to serve the military telegraphs. They keep secrets well. The blind men serve in the bands. And the men without legs ride in barouches in state processions. Everybody serves somewhere."

"That is the reason," said I, with a sigh, "why everybody has so much time in Sybaris!"

* * * * *

But the reader has more than enough of this. Else I would print my journal of "A Week in Sybaris." By Thursday the boat was mended. I hunted up the old fisherman and his boys. He was willing to go where my Excellency bade, but he said his boys wanted to stay. They would like to live here.

"Among the devils?" said I.

The old man confessed that the place for poor men was the best place he ever saw; the markets were cheap, the work was light, the inns were neat, the people were civil, the music was good, the churches were free, and the priests did not lie. He believed the reason that nobody ever came back from Sybaris was, that nobody wanted to.

The Proxenus nodded, well pleased.

"So Battista and his brother would like to stay a few months; and he found he might bring Caterina too, when my Excellency had returned from Gallipoli; or did my Excellency think that, when Garibaldi had driven out the Bourbons, all the world would be like Sybaris?"

My Excellency hoped so; but did not dare promise.

* * * * *

"You see now," said George, "why you hear so little of Sybaris. Enough people come to us. But you are the only man I ever saw leave Sybaris who did not mean to return."

"And I," said I,--"do you think I am never coming here again?"

"You found it a hard harbor to make," said the Proxenus. "We have published no sailing directions since St. Paul touched here, and those which he wrote--he sent them to the Corinthians yonder--neither they nor any one else have seemed to understand."

"Good by."

"God bless you! Good by." And I sailed for Gallipoli.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote B: I am writing in Westerly's snuggery, and in Providence they believe in Webster. I dare say it is worse in Worcester. A good many things are.]

[Footnote C: The reader who cares to follow the detail is referred to Diodorus Siculus, XII.; Strabo, VI.; Ælian, V. H. 9, c. 24; Athenæus, XII. 518; Plutarch in Pelopidas; Herodotus, V. and VI. Compare Laurent's Geographical Notes, and Wheeler and Gaisford; Pliny, III. 15, VII. 22, XVI. 33, VIII. 64, XXXI. 9; Aristotle, Polit. IV. 12, V. 3; Heyne's Opuscula, II. 74; Bentley's Phalaris, 367; Solinus, 2, § 10, "luxuries grossly exaggerated"; Scymnus, 337-360; Aristophanes, Vesp. 1427, 1436; Lycophron, Alex. 1079; Polybius, Gen. Hist. II. 3, on the confederation of Sybaris, Krotan, and Kaulonia,--"a perplexing statement," says Grote, "showing that he must have conceived the history of Sybaris in a very different form from that in which it is commonly represented"; third volume of De Non, who disagrees with Magnan as to the site of Sybaris, and says the sea-shore is uninhabitable! Tuccagni Orlandini, Vol. XI., Supplement, p. 294; besides the dictionaries and books of travels, including Murray. I have availed myself, without other reference, of most of these authorities.]

THE PIANO IN THE UNITED STATES.

Twenty-five thousand pianos were made in the United States last year!

This is the estimate of the persons who know most of this branch of manufacture, but it is only an approximation to the truth; for, besides the sixty makers in New York, the thirty in Boston, the twenty in Philadelphia, the fifteen in Baltimore, the ten in Albany, and the less number in Cincinnati, Buffalo, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco, there are small makers in many country towns, and even in villages, who buy the parts of a piano in the nearest city, put them together, and sell the instrument in the neighborhood. The returns of the houses which supply the ivory keys of the piano to all the makers in the country are confirmatory of this estimate; which, we may add, is that of Messrs. Steinway of New York, who have made it a point to collect both the literature and the statistics of the instrument, of which they are among the largest manufacturers in the world.

The makers' prices of pianos now range from two hundred and ninety dollars to one thousand; and the prices to the public, from four hundred and fifty dollars to fifteen hundred. We may conclude, therefore, that the people of the United States during the year 1866 expended fifteen millions of dollars in the purchase of new pianos. It is not true that we export many pianos to foreign countries, as the public are led to suppose from the advertisements of imaginative manufacturers. American citizens--all but the few consummately able kings of business--allow a free play to their imagination in advertising the products of their skill. Canada buys a small number of our pianos; Cuba, a few; Mexico, a few; South America, a few; and now and then one is sent to Europe, or taken thither by a Thalberg or a Gottschalk; but an inflated currency and a war tariff make it impossible for Americans to compete with European makers in anything but excellence. In price, they cannot compete. Every disinterested and competent judge with whom we have conversed on this subject gives it as his deliberate opinion that the best American piano is the best of all pianos, and the one longest capable of resisting the effects of a trying climate; yet we cannot sell them, at present, in any considerable numbers, in any market but our own. Protectionists are requested to note this fact, which is not an isolated fact. America possesses such an astonishing genius for inventing and combining labor-saving machinery, that we could now supply the world with many of its choicest products, in the teeth of native competition, but for the tariff, the taxes, and the inflation, which double the cost of producing. The time may come, however, when we shall sell pianos at Paris, and watches in London, as we already do sewing-machines everywhere.

Twenty-five thousand pianos a year, at a cost of fifteen millions of dollars! Presented in this manner, the figures produce an effect upon the mind, and we wonder that an imperfectly reconstructed country could absorb in a single year, and that year an unprosperous one, so large a number of costly musical instruments. But, upon performing a sum in long division, we discover that these startling figures merely mean, that every working-day in this country one hundred and twelve persons buy a new piano. When we consider, that every hotel, steamboat, and public school above a certain very moderate grade, must have from one to four pianos, and that young ladies' seminaries jingle with them from basement to garret, (one school in New York has thirty Chickerings,) and that almost every couple that sets up housekeeping on a respectable scale considers a piano only less indispensable than a kitchen range, we are rather inclined to wonder at the smallness than at the largeness of the number.

The trade in new pianos, however, is nothing to the countless transactions in old. Here figures are impossible; but probably ten second-hand pianos are sold to one new one. The business of letting pianos is also one of great extent. It is computed by the well-informed, that the number of these instruments now "out," in the city of New York, is three thousand. There is one firm in Boston that usually has a thousand let. As the rent of a piano ranges from six dollars to twelve dollars a month,--cartage both ways paid by the hirer,--it may be inferred that this business, when conducted on a large scale, and with the requisite vigilance, is not unprofitable. In fact, the income of a piano-letting business has approached eighty thousand dollars per annum, of which one third was profit. It has, however, its risks and drawbacks. From June to September, the owner of the instruments must find storage for the greater part of his stock, and must do without most of his monthly returns. Many of those who hire pianos, too, are persons "hanging on the verge" of society, who have little respect for the property of others, and vanish to parts unknown, leaving a damaged piano behind them.

England alone surpasses the United States in the number of pianos annually manufactured. In 1852, the one hundred and eighty English makers produced twenty-three thousand pianos,--fifteen hundred grands, fifteen hundred squares, and twenty thousand uprights. As England has enjoyed fifteen years of prosperity since, it is probable that the annual number now exceeds that of the United States. The English people, however, pay much less money for the thirty thousand pianos which they probably buy every year, than we do for our twenty-five thousand. In London, the retail price of the best Broadwood grand, in plain mahogany case, is one hundred and thirty-five guineas; which is a little more than half the price of the corresponding American instrument. The best London square piano, in plain case, is sixty guineas,--almost exactly half the American price. Two thirds of all the pianos made in England are low-priced uprights,--averaging thirty-five guineas,--which would not stand in our climate for a year. England, therefore, supplies herself and the British empire with pianos at an annual expenditure of about eight millions of our present dollars. American makers, we may add, have recently taken a hint from their English brethren with regard to the upright instrument. Space is getting to be the dearest of all luxuries in our cities, and it has become highly desirable to have pianos that occupy less of it than the square instrument which we usually see. Successful attempts have been recently made to apply the new methods of construction to the upright piano, with a view to make it as durable as those of the usual forms. Such a brisk demand has sprung up for the improved uprights, that the leading makers are producing them in considerable numbers, and the Messrs. Steinway are erecting a new building for the sole purpose of manufacturing them. The American uprights, however, cannot be cheap. Such is the nature of the American climate, that a piano, to be tolerable, must be excellent; and while parts of the upright cost more than the corresponding parts of the square, no part of it costs less. Six hundred dollars is the price of the upright in plain rosewood case,--fifty dollars more than a plain rosewood square.

Paris pianos are renowned, the world over, and consequently three tenths of all the pianos made in Paris are exported to foreign countries. France, too, owing to the cheapness of labor, can make a better cheap piano than any other country. In 1852, there were ten thousand pianos made in Paris, at an average cost of one thousand francs each; and, we are informed, a very good new upright piano can now be bought in France for one hundred dollars. But in France the average wages of piano-makers are five francs per day; in London, ten shillings; in New York, four dollars and thirty-three cents. The cream of the business, in Paris, is divided among three makers,--Erard, Hertz, and Pleyel,--each of whom has a concert-hall of his own, to give _éclat_ to his establishment. We presume Messrs. Steinway added "Steinway Hall" to the attractions of New York from the example of their Paris friends, and soon the metropolis will boast a "Chickering Hall" as well. This is an exceedingly expensive form of advertisement. Steinway Hall cost two hundred thousand dollars, and has not yet paid the cost of warming, cleaning, and lighting it. This, however, is partly owing to the good-nature of the proprietors, who find it hard to exact the rent from a poor artist after a losing concert, and who have a constitutional difficulty about saying _No_, when the use of the hall is asked for a charitable object.

In Germany there are no manufactories of pianos on the scale of England, France, and the United States. A business of five pianos a week excites astonishment in a German state, and it is not uncommon there for one man to construct every part of a piano,--a work of three or four months. Mr. Steinway the elder has frequently done this in his native place, and could now do it. A great number of excellent instruments are made in Germany in the slow, patient, thorough manner of the Germans; but in the fashionable houses of Berlin and Vienna no German name is so much valued as those of the celebrated makers of Paris. In the London exhibition of 1851, Russian pianos competed for the medals, some of which attracted much attention from the excellence of their construction. Messrs. Chickering assert, that the Russians were the first to employ successfully the device of "overstringing," as it is called, by which the bass strings are stretched over the others.

The piano, then, one hundred and fifty-seven years after its invention, in spite of its great cost, has become the leading musical instrument of Christendom. England produces thirty thousand every year; the United States, twenty-five thousand; France, fifteen thousand; Germany, perhaps ten thousand; and all other countries, ten thousand; making a total of ninety thousand, or four hundred and twenty-two for every working-day. It is computed, that an average piano is the result of one hundred and twenty days' work; and, consequently, there must be at least fifty thousand men employed in the business. And it is only within a few years that the making of these noble instruments has been done on anything like the present scale. Messrs. Broadwood, of London, who have made in all one hundred and twenty-nine thousand pianos, only begin to count at the year 1780; and in the United States there were scarcely fifty pianos a year made fifty years ago.

We need scarcely say that the production of music for the piano has kept pace with the advance of the instrument. Dr. Burney mentions, in his History of Music (Vol. IV. p. 664), that when he came to London in 1744, "Handel's Harpsichord Lessons and Organ Concertos, and the two First Books of Scarletti's Lessons, were all the good music for keyed instruments at that time in the nation." We have at this moment before us the catalogue of music sold by one house in Boston, Oliver Ditson & Co. It is a closely printed volume of three hundred and sixty pages, and contains the titles of about thirty-three thousand pieces of music, designed to be performed, wholly or partly, on the piano. By far the greater number are piano music pure and simple. It is not a very rare occurrence for a new piece to have a sale of one hundred thousand copies in the United States. A composer who can produce the kind of music that pleases the greatest number, may derive a revenue from his art ten times greater than Mozart or Beethoven enjoyed in their most prosperous time. There are trifling waltzes and songs upon the list of Messrs. Ditson, which have yielded more profit than Mozart received for "Don Giovanni" and "The Magic Flute" together. We learn from the catalogue just mentioned, that the composers of music have an advantage over the authors of books, in being always able to secure a publisher for their productions. Messrs. Ditson announce that they are ready and willing to publish any piece of music by any composer on the following easy conditions: "Three dollars per page for engraving; two dollars and a half per hundred sheets of paper; and one dollar and a quarter per hundred pages for printing." At the same time they frankly notify ambitious teachers, that "not one piece in ten pays the cost of getting up, and not one in fifty proves a success."