-workers, carpenters, and the like, to be carried on in the heart
of the city, so that their sleep might be wholly undisturbed by
noise.... And a Sybarite who had gone to Lacedaemon, and had been invited
to the public meal, after he had sat on their wooden benches and
partaken of their fare, said that he had been astonished at the
fearlessness of the Lacedaemonians when he knew it only by report; but
now that he had seen them, he thought that they did not excel other men,
for he thought that any brave man had much rather die than be obliged to
live such a life as they did." Then there is another story, among the
"miscellaneous anecdotes," of a Sybarite who was asked if he had slept
well. He said, No, that he believed he had a crumpled rose-leaf under
him in the night. And there is yet another, of one of them who said that
it made his back ache to see another man digging.

I have asked Polly, as I write, to look in Mark Lemon's Jest-Book for
these stories. They are not in the index there. But I dare say they are
in Cotton Mather and Jeremy Taylor. Any way, they are bits of very cheap
Greek. Now it is on these stories that the reputation of the Sybarites
in modern times appears to depend.

Now look at them. This Sybarite at Sparta said, that in war death was
often easier than the hardships of life. Well, is not that true? Have
not thousands of brave men said it? When the English and French got
themselves established on the wrong side of Sebastopol, what did that
engineer officer of the French say to somebody who came to inspect his
works? He was talking of St. Arnaud, their first commander. "Cunning
dog," said he, "he went and died." Death was easier than life. But
nobody ever said he was a coward or effeminate because he said this.
Why, if Mr. Fields would permit an excursus in twelve numbers here, on
this theme, we would defer Sybaris to the 1st of April, 1868, while we
illustrated the Sybarite's manly epigram, which these stupid Spartans
could only gape at, but could not understand.

Then take the rose-leaf story. Suppose by good luck you were
breakfasting with General Grant, or Pelissier, or the Duke of
Wellington. Suppose you said, "I hope you slept well," and the great
soldier said, "No, I did not; I think a rose-leaf must have stood up
edgewise under me." Would you go off and say in your book of travels
that the Americans, or the French, or the English are all effeminate
pleasure-seekers, because one of them made