George laughed again, and indeed blushed. "Do you know what a bore is?" said he.
"Alas! I do," said I.
"Well," said he, "the universal custom here is, that an uninvited guest, who calls on another man on his own business, rises at the end of eleven minutes, and offers to go. And the courts have ruled, very firmly, that there must be a bona fide effort. We get into such a habit of it, that, with you, I really did it unawares. The custom is as old as Cleisthenes and his wedding. But some of the decisions are not more than two or three centuries old, and they are very funny.
"On the whole," he added, "I think it works well. Of course, between friends, it is absurd, but it is a great protection against a class of people who think their own concerns are the only things of value. You see you have only to say, when a man comes in, that you thank him for coming, that you wish he would stay, or to take his hat or his stick,—you have only to make him an invited guest,—and then the rule does not hold."
"Ah!" said I; "then I invite you to spend every evening with me while I am here."
"Take care," said he; "the Government Almanac is printed and distributed gratuitously from the fines on bores. Their funds are getting very low up at the department, and they will be very sharp on your friends. So you need not be profuse in your invitations."
This conversation was a clew to a good many things which I saw while I was in the city. I never was in a place where there were so many tasteful, pretty little conveniences for everybody. At the quadrants, where the streets cross, there was always a pretty little sheltered seat for four or five people,—shaded, stuffed, dry, and always the morning and evening papers, and an advertisement of the times of boats and trains, for any one who might be waiting for a car or for a friend. Sometimes these were votive offerings, where public spirit had spoken in gratitude. More often they had been ordered at the cost of some one who had taken from a citizen what he could not repay. The private citizen might often hesitate about prosecuting a bore, or a nuisance, or a conceited company officer. But the Kategoroi made no bones about it. They called the citizen as a witness, and gave the criminal a reminder which posterity held in awe. Their point, as they always explained it to me, is, that the citizen's health and strength are essential to the state. The state cannot afford to have him maimed, any more than it can afford to have him drunk or ignorant. The individual, of course, cannot be following up his separate grievances with people who abridge his rights. But the public accuser can and does.
With us, public servants, who know they are public servants, are always obliging and civil. I would not ask better treatment in my own home than I am sure of in Capitol, State-house, or city hall. It is only when you get to some miserable sub-bureau, where the servant of the servant of a creature of the state can bully you, that you come to grief. For instance the State of Massachusetts just now forbids corporations to work children more than ten hours a day. The corporations obey. But the overseers in the rooms, whom the corporations employ, work children eleven hours, or as many as they choose. They would not stand that in Sybaris.