United States or Kenya ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The following account is given in the words of Admiral Castle: "In the year 1837, I commanded HMS Pylades, on the East India station. We were on our return home, by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, when, on the 8th of May of that year, we were off Cape L'Agulhus.
The postmaster, Heer Klein, and his old Pylades, Heer Ley, are great cronies of mine stout old greybeards, toddling down the hill together. I sometimes go and sit on the stoep with the two old bachelors, and they take it as a great compliment; and Heer Klein gave me my letters all decked with flowers, and wished 'Vrolyke tydings, Mevrouw, most heartily.
At last we also felt such a necessity; and, conducted by Pylades, we found a neat, well-arranged eating-house. When we encountered no more guests, since everybody was going about the streets, we were all the better pleased, and passed the greatest part of the night most happily and cheerfully, in the feeling of friendship, love, and attachment.
Orestes now enters with Pylades, and, in a speech to him, states that he has already sacrificed at his father's grave, but that not daring to enter the city, he wishes to find his sister, who, he is aware, is married and dwells somewhere near on the frontiers, that he may learn from her the posture of affairs. He sees Electra approach with the water-pitcher, and retires.
In the palace of Strophius Orestes grew up with the king's son Pylades, and formed with him that ardent friendship which has become proverbial. Electra frequently reminded her brother by messengers of the duty of avenging his father's death, and when grown up he consulted the oracle of Delphi, which confirmed him in his design.
They put their heads together whispering, nodding, and smiling approval. "Damon and Pythias," "Orestes and Pylades," were the names bestowed upon the two friends. But at length courtesy demanded that the audience should give some little attention to the reading of the Greek thesis, whether they understood a word of it or not. Their patience was not put to a long test.
So there we lay at anchor for weary hours, listening to the church-bells chiming drowsily through the heavy air, till an enterprising tug ventured out for the mails, and sent another for the relief of the passengers. The custom-house officers were not troublesome, and I was soon at the Brevoort House, the Parisian Pylades still faithfully following my fortunes.
He saw at once that her trouble was mental and, like a wise physician, engaged her in general conversation. Quite possibly he knew her story, for the name of a certain actor, Pylades, was mentioned, and he noticed that her pulse at once increased in rapidity and became irregular.
Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden: but let those things alone and go to man, for whom as the other things are, so it seemeth in him her uttermost cunning is employed, and know whether she have brought forth so true a lover as Theagenes, so constant a friend as Pylades, so valiant a man as Orlando, so right a prince as Xenophon's Cyrus: so excellent a man every way, as Virgil's Aneas.
Until this time Barbier and Carré had been as close friends as Orestes and Pylades, but now they had a falling out. What one proposed, the other systematically refused. One lived in Paris; the other in the country. I went from Paris to the country and from the country to Paris trying to get these warring brothers to agree.
Word Of The Day