So having rung for a shilling's worth of gin-and-water warm, and
wishing you was here to take another of the same, I puts my lips to
it, and drinks to one as was my frequent pardner in this mortial
vale, and am, as in old days, my Betsy's own
SAIREY GAMP.
LETTER: From Herodotus of Halicarnassus to Sophocles the Athenian.
Herodotus describes, in a letter to his friend Sophocles, a curious
encounter with a mariner just returned from unknown parts of
Africa.
To Sophocles, the Athenian, greeting. Yesterday, as I was going
down to the market-place of Naucratis, I met Nicarete, who of all
the hetairai in this place is the most beautiful. Now, the
hetairai of Naucratis are wont somehow to be exceedingly fair,
beyond all women whom we know. She had with her a certain Phocaean
mariner, who was but now returned from a voyage to those parts of
Africa which lie below Arabia; and she saluted me courteously, as
knowing that it is my wont to seek out and inquire the tidings of
all men who have intelligence concerning the ends of the earth.
"Hail to thee, Nicarete," said I; "verily thou art this morning as
lovely as the dawn, or as the beautiful Rhodopis that died ere thou
wert born to us through the favour of Aphrodite." {4}
Now this Rhodopis was she who built, they say, the Pyramid of
Mycerinus: wherein they speak not truly but falsely, for Rhodopis
lived long after the kings who built the Pyramids.
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