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: Chre xeiuon pareonta philein, ethelonta de pempein.]"
"Welcome the coming, speed the par