The Ship: Or, the Wishes (46)

Timolaus

Now, positively, Lycinus, you must have a try yourself. You find fault with everybody else; this timte we should like to hear your version of a really unexceptionable wish.

Lycinus

What do I want with a wish? Here we are at the gates. What with the valiant Samippus’s single combat at Babylon, and your breakfasts in Syria and dinners in Italy, you have used up my ground between you; and you are heartily welcome.

I have no fancy for a short-lived visionary wealth, with the humiliating sequel of barley-bread and no butter. That will be your fate presently. Your bliss and your wealth will take wings; you will wake from your charming dreams of treasure and: diadems, to find that your domestic arrangements are of quite another kind, like the actors who take the king’s part in tragedies;—their late majesties King Agamemnon and King Creon usually return to very short commons on leaving the theatre. Some depression, some discontent-at your existing arrangements, is to be expected on the occasion. You will be the worst off, Timolaus. Your flying-machine will come to grief, like that of Icarus; you will descend from the skies, and foot it on the ground; and all those rings will slip off and be lost. As for me, I am content with the exquisite amusement afforded me by your various wishes; I would not exchange it for all the treasure in the world, Babylon included. And you call yourselves philosophers!