"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.; AElian, V. H. 9, c. 24; Athenaeus, 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, Sec. 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.]