The Ship: Or, the Wishes (20)

You should make it more plausible. Find a treasure under your bed; that would save unloading the gold, and getting it up to town.

Oh yes! It shall be dug up from under the Hermes in our court; a thousand bushels of coined gold. Well; my first thought has been for a handsome house,—‘the homestead first and chiefest,’ says Hesiod; and my purchases in the neighbourhood are now complete; there remains my property at Delphi, and the sea-front at Eleusis; and a little something at the Isthmus (I might want to stop there for the games); and the plain of Sicyon; and in short every scrap of land in the country where there is nice shade, or a good stream, or fine fruit; I reserve them all. We will eat off gold plate; and our cups shall weigh 100 lb. apiece; I will have none of the flimsy ware that appears on Echecrates’s table.