CHAPTER VI The princess Nausicaa,The washing.

" So saying she went away, and Nausicaa awoke, full of pleasing thoughts of her marriage, which the dream had told her was not far distant; and as soon as it was dawn, she arose and dressed herself, and went to find her parents.

And Nausicaa brought from her chamber all her vestments, and laid them up in the coach, and her mother placed bread and wine in the coach, and oil in a golden cruse, to soften the bright skins of Nausicaa and her maids when they came out of the river.

And Nausicaa brought from her chamber all her vestments, and laid them up in the coach, and her mother placed bread and wine in the coach, and oil in a golden cruse, to soften the bright skins of Nausicaa and her maids when they came out of the river.

Nausicaa making her maids get up into the coach with her, lashed the mules, till they brought her to the cisterns which stood a little on the outside of the town, and were supplied with water from the river Callicoe.

When they had laid their clothes to dry, they fell to playing again, and Nausicaa joined them in a game with the ball, which is used in that country, which is performed by tossing the ball from hand to hand with great expedition, she who begins the pastime singing a song.

" Ulysses retiring a little out of sight, cleansed him in the cisterns from the soil and impurities with which the rocks and waves had covered all his body, and clothing himself with befitting raiment, which the princess's attendants had given him, he presented himself in more worthy shape to Nausicaa.

But when he approached the palace, and beheld its riches, the proportion of its architecture, its avenues, gardens, statues, fountains, he stood rapt in admiration, and almost forgot his own condition in surveying the flourishing estate of others: but recollecting himself he passed on boldly into the inner apartment, where the king and queen were sitting at dinner with their peers; Nausicaa having prepared them for his approach.

But not as yet did he reveal to the king and queen who he was, or whence he had come; only in brief terms he related his being cast upon their shores, his sleep in the woods, and his meeting with the princess Nausicaa: whose generosity, mingled with discretion filled her parents with delight, as Ulysses in eloquent phrases adorned and commended her virtues.

The gods give thee, Nausicaa, a princely husband; and from you two spring blessings to this state."

Then Grace went forward, like Nausicaa when she left Ulysses, lest the townsfolk should talk; and Tom sat down upon a bank and watched her figure vanishing in the dusk.

Twice he took part in the action, once as the blind old Thamyris playing on the harp, and once in his own lost tragedy, the "Nausicaa."

As the olives had been gathered in the days of Nausicaa they should be gathered still, and so should the oil be made, and he was obliged to yield.

Nausicaa receives.

Nausicaa receives.

In Homer they were used for drawing wagons: thus Nausicaa drove a mule team to haul out the family wash, and Priam made his visit to Achilles in a mule litter.

" Thereupon they passed through a wicket-gate into a kind of glen or wilderness, at the end of John Mortimer's garden, and beyond the stream where his little girls acted Nausicaa and his little boys had preserves of minute fishes, ingeniously fenced in with sticks and fine netting.

ALCIN`OUS, a king of the Phæacians, the father of Nausicaa, who figures in the Odyssey as the host of Ulysses, who had been shipwrecked on his shore.

NAUSICAA, the daughter of Alcinous, king of the Phæacians, who gave welcome to Ulysses when shipwrecked on the shore, and whom Homer represents as, along with her maidens, washing the clothes of the hero and his companions.

The brook Kressida at the point where it enters the lake is also pointed out as the spot where Ulysses was cast ashore and met the Princess Nausicaa.

When she was not actually present, he yet took her with him through the wide regions of his studies-set her figure in old Greek landscapes and surrounded it with dim shapes of lovelinesssaw her sometimes as the perfection that went into marblemade her a portion of legend and story, linking her with Nausicaa and Andromache and the lost others.