rs many thousand times; and yet you have only to
bid any one of your domestics go buy this, or that, and bring it you
from market, and not one of them will hesitate. The whole world knows
both where to go and where to find each thing.

[39] Lit. "now whether these things I say are true (i.e. are facts),
we can make experiment of the things themselves (i.e. of actual
facts to prove to us)."

"And why is this?" I asked. "Merely because they lie in an appointed
place. But now, if you are seeking for a human being, and that too at
times when he is seeking you on his side also, often and often shall
you give up the search in sheer despair: and of this again the reason?
Nothing else save that no appointed place was fixed where one was
to await the other." Such, so far as I can now recall it, was the
conversation which we held together touching the arrangement of our
various chattels and their uses.

IX

Well (I replied), and did your wife appear, Ischomachus, to lend a
willing ear to what you tried thus earnestly to teach her?

Isch. Most certainly she did, with promise to pay all attention. Her
delight was evident, like some one's who at length has found a pathway
out of difficulties; in proof of which she begged me to lose no time in
making the orderly arrangement I had spoken of.

And how did you introduce the order she demanded, Ischomachus? (I
asked).

Isch. Well, first of all I thought I ought to show her the capacities
of our house. Since you must know, it is not decked with ornaments and
fretted ceilings, [1] Socrates; but the rooms were built expressly with
a view to forming the most apt receptacles for whatever was intended
to be put in them, so that the very look of them proclaimed what suited
each particular chamber best. Thus our own bedroom, [2] secure in its
position like a stronghold, claimed possession of our choicest carpets,
coverlets, and other furniture. Thus, too, the warm dry rooms would seem
to ask for our stock of bread-stuffs; the chill cellar for our wine; the
bright and well-lit chambers for whatever works or furniture required
light, and so forth.

[1] Or, "curious workmanship and paintings." See "Mem." III. viii. 10.
Cf. Plat. "Rep." vii. 529 B; "Hipp. maj." 298 A. See Becker,
"Charicles," Exc. i. 111.

[2] Or, "the bridal chamber." See Becker, op. cit. p. 266. Al. "our
store-chamber." See Hom. "Od." xxi. 9:

{be d' imenai thalamonde sun amphipoloisi gunaix