Ashamed to name her marriage to her father dear.


But he understood all--and she goes forth in the mule-waggon, with
the clothes, after her mother has put in "a chest of all kinds of
delicate food, and meat, and wine in a goatskin;" and last but not
least, the indispensable cruse of oil for anointing after the
bath, to which both Jews, Greeks, and Romans owed so much health
and beauty. And then we read in the simple verse of a poet too
refined, like the rest of his race, to see anything mean or
ridiculous in that which was not ugly and unnatural, how she and
her maids got into the "polished waggon," "with good wheels," and
she "took the whip and the studded reins," and "beat them till
they started;" and how the mules, "rattled" away, and "pulled
against each other," till


When they came to the fair flowing river
Which feeds good lavatories all the year,
Fitted to cleanse all sullied robes soever,
They from the wain the mules unharnessed there,
And chased them free, to crop their juicy fare
By the swift river, on the margin green;
Then to the waters dashed the clothes they bare
And in the stream-filled trenches stamped them clean.
Which, having washed and cleansed, they spread before
The sunbeams, on the beach, where most did lie
Thick pebbles, by the sea-wave washed ashore.
So, having left them in the heat to dry,
They to the bath went down, and by-and-by,