L. But, Egypt, why did you tell me you disliked sewing so?

Egypt.  Did not I show you how the thread cuts my fingers? and I always get cramp, somehow, in my neck, if I sew long.

L. Well, I suppose the Egyptian queens thought everybody got cramp in their neck, if they sewed long; and that thread always cut people’s fingers.  At all events, every kind of manual labor was despised both by them, and the Greeks; and, while they owned the real good and fruit of it, they yet held it a degradation to all who practiced it.  Also, knowing the laws of life thoroughly, they perceived that the special practice necessary to bring any manual art to perfection strengthened the body distortedly; one energy or member gaining at the expense of the rest.  They especially dreaded and despised any kind of work that had to be done near fire:  yet, feeling what they owed to it in metal-work, as the basis of all other work, they expressed this mixed reverence and scorn in the varied types of the lame Hephaestus, and the lower Pthah.

Sibyl.  But what did you mean by making him say “Everything great I can make small, and everything small great”?

L. I had my own separate meaning in that.  We have seen in modern times the power of the lower Pthah developed in a separate way, which no Greek nor Egyptian could have conceived.  It is the character of pure and eyeless manual labor to conceive everything as subjected to it:  and, in reality, to disgrace and diminish all that is so subjected, aggrandizing itself, and the thought of itself, at the expense of all noble things.  I heard an orator, and a good one too, at the Working Men’s College, the other day, make a great point in a description of our railroads; saying, with grandly conducted emphasis, “They have made man greater, and the world less.”  His working audience were mightily pleased; they thought it so very fine a thing to be made bigger themselves; and all the rest of the world less.  I should have enjoyed asking them (but it would have been a pity—­they were so pleased), how much less they would like to have the world made;—­and whether, at present, those of them really felt the biggest men, who lived in the least houses.

Sibyl.  But then, why did you make Pthah say that he could make weak things strong, and small things great?

L. My dear, he is a boaster and self-assertor, by nature; but it is so far true.  For instance, we used to have a fair in our neighborhood—­a very fine fair we thought it.  You never saw such an one; but if you look at the engraving of Turner’s “St. Catherine’s Hill,” you will see what it was like.  There were curious booths, carried on poles; and peep-shows; and music, with plenty of drums and cymbals; and much barley-sugar and gingerbread, and the like:  and in the alleys of this fair the London populace would enjoy themselves, after their fashion, very thoroughly.  Well, the little Pthah set to work upon it one day; he made