irit 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