Page:Fables of Aesop and other eminent mythologists.djvu/40

14 Sea ide with all your Servants and your Trinkets about you, and put on a Countenance, that you are jut Now about to make good your Undertaking. You'l have Thouands of Spectators there, and When they are got together, let the Form of the Agreement and the Conditions be read, Which runs to this Effect. That you are to Drink up the Sea by uch a Certain Time, or to forfeit your Houe and Land, upon Such or Such a Conideration. When This is done, call for a Great Glas, and let it be filled with Sea-Water, in the Sight of the Whole Multitude: Hold it up then in your Hand, and ay as Follows. ''You have heard Good People, what I have Undertaken to do, and upon what Penalty if I do not go Through with it. I confes the Agreement, and the Matter of Fact as you have heard it; and I am now about to drink up the Sea; not the Rivers that run into't. And therefore let All the Inlets be Stop't, that there be Nothing but pure Sea left me to drink, And I am now ready to perform my part of the Agreement, But for any drinking of the Rivers, There is nothing of that in the Contract. The People found it o clear a Cae, That they did not only agree to the Reaon and Jutice of Xanthus's Caue, but hied his Adverary out of the Field; Who in the Concluion made a Publique Acknowledgment, that Xanthus was the Wier and Better Man of the Two; But deired the Contract might be made voyd, and offer'd to Submit Himelfe further to uch Arbitrators as Xanthus'' Himelfe hould direct. Xanthus was o well pleaed with the Character his Adverary had given him, of a Wie Man, That All was Parted over, And a finall End made of the Dipute. Plutarch makes this to have be'n the Invention of Bias.