pounding, rubbing, rinsing the
white garments of their husbands, brothers, sons. Not without sympathy
will the by-stander look on, thinking that those efforts are to make
clean themselves and their household, life being in truth a continual
cleansing for every human soul. So Hellas has still the appearance of
an eternal wash-day. (See author's _Walk in Hellas, passim_.)

Nausicaa obtains without difficulty wagon and mules and help of
servants. After all, the affair is something of a frolic or outing;
when the task is done, there is the bath, the song, and a game of ball.
It is worthy of notice that the word (_amaxa_) here used by old Homer
for _wagon_, may still be heard throughout Greece for the same or a
similar thing. In the harbor of Piraeus the hackman will ask the
traveler: "Do you want my _amaxa_?" The dance (_choros_), is still the
chief amusement of the Greek villagers, and, as in Nausicaa's time, the
young man wishes to enter the dance with new-washed garments, white as
snow, whose folds ripple around his body in harmony with his graceful
movements. Many an echo of Phaeacia, in language, custom and costume,
can be found in Greece at present, indicating, like the Cyclopean
masonry, the solid and permanent substructure of Homer's poetry, still
in place after more than 2500 years of wear and tear.

II.

The washing is done now, the sport is over, and the party is getting
ready to go home; but the main object is not yet accomplished. Ulysses
and Nausicaa are here to be brought together--the much-experienced man
and the innocent maiden with her pure ethical instinct of Family. In
many ways the two stand far asunder, yet in one thing they are alike:
each is seeking the domestic relation, each will consummate the bond of
love which has two phases, the one being after marriage and the other
before marriage. Both are moving in their deepest nature toward the
unity of the Family, though on different lines; Ulysses and Nausicaa
have a common trait of character, which will be sympathetically found
by each and will bring them together.

I. At this fresh turn of affairs there is an intervention of Pallas,
not prolonged, but sufficient: "Thereupon Athena (Pallas) planned other
things, that Ulysses should wake, and see the fair-faced maiden who
would conduct him to the city of the Phaeacians." The Goddess does not
appear in person, as the deities so often do in the Iliad, nor does she
take a mortal shape, or move Ulysse