496 PEOSE HAI/IEtTTICS. 



taken up as a Siren; the circumstances were these: people 

 in the street could not pass my laboratory for the delicious 

 scents that steamed out from it ; busiuess and pleasure 

 alike enchanted stood fixed before the door — there was 

 no thoroughfare — the order to ' move on' had no effect 

 — the crowd only increased, our premises were like a hive 

 with a swarm of citizens aU round/ ' And how did they 

 get away then?' 'You may well ask the question, but 

 necessity invents means not at first apparent. You re- 

 member how Ulysses escaped the Siren -song by stopping 

 his ears with cotton : just so here ; men's friends from a 

 distance, guessing their plight from our neighboiu'hoodj 

 rushed manfully to the rescue, and, stopping both nos- 

 trils with the left hand, extricated them by means of the 

 right from their savoury magnetic thraldom.' 



' Have you gone through the whole duty of cooks ?' 

 ' Not entirely ; for what is knowledge kept to oneself (as 

 Thembryon, our great coryphaeus, was wont to say) but 

 useless as a miser's gold or a prude's beauty ? The real 

 cook is careful to impart his advantages to others ; he 

 takes pupils, does not refuse a consultation out-of-doors 

 when asked for advice, and finally gives lectures. As 

 to pupils, some instruct more, some less : I have turned 

 out a good many ; but there are seven whom I call my 

 seven wise men, and of them I am especially proud. 

 One is a Rhodian, called Agis, the best man for cooking 

 fish (a/t/DO)?) to a turn now in Athens, or perhaps any- 

 where; Nereus, another fish-cook, is equally excellent, 

 though juvenile ; he undertakes about twenty species at 

 present, but being a young man of considerable ability, 

 will, I doubt not, if he live, become an ornament to this 

 branch of the profession. Death carried off poor Tech- 

 non, who was quite equal to Agis, and I go and drop 

 a tear occasionally over the noble apopyrus (funeral 

 mound) of fish-bones which his friend Charinus erected 

 to his memory. Por yellow dishes (curries ?) Chariades is 



