the kind speeches and hospitable usage which you have shewn me!"

Eumaeus made answer, "My poor guest, if one in much worse plight than
yourself had arrived here, it were a shame to such scanty means as I
have, if I had let him depart without entertaining him to the best of
my ability. Poor men, and such as have no houses of their own, are by
Jove himself recommended to our care. But the cheer which we that are
servants to other men have to bestow, is but sorry at most, yet freely
and lovingly I give it you. Indeed there once ruled here a man, whose
return the gods have set their faces against, who, if he had been
suffered to reign in peace and grow old among us, would have been kind
to me and mine. But he is gone; and for his sake would to God that the
whole posterity of Helen might perish with her, since in her quarrel
so many worthies have perished. But such as your fare is, eat it,
and be welcome; such lean beasts as are food for poor herdsmen. The
fattest go to feed the voracious stomachs of the queen's suitors.
Shame on their unworthiness, there is no day in which two or three
of the noblest of the herd are not slain to support their feasts and
their surfeits."

Ulysses gave good ear to his words, and as he ate his meat, he even
tore it and rent it with his teeth, for mere vexation that his fat
cattle should be slain to glut the appetites of those godless suitors.
And he said, "What chief or what ruler is this, that thou commendest
so highly, and sayest that he perished at Troy? I am but a stranger in
these parts. It may be I have heard of some such in my long travels."

Eumaeus answered, "Old father, never any one of all the strangers
that have come to our coast with news of Ulysses being alive, could
gain credit with the queen or her son yet. These travellers, to get
raiment or a meal, will not stick to invent any lie. Truth is not the
commodity they deal in. Never did the queen get any thing of them but
lies. She receives all that come graciously, hears their stories,
enquires all she can, but all ends in tears and dissatisfaction. But
in God's name, old father, if you have got a tale, make the most on't,
it may gain you a cloak or a coat from somebody to keep you warm: but
for him who is the subject of it, dogs and vultures long since have
torn him limb from limb, or some great fish at sea has devoured him,
or he lieth with no better monument upon his bones than the sea-sand.
But for me past all the race of