Sycophant

“ Syc′ophantry, the arts of the sycophant. [Gr. sykophantēs, usually said to mean one who informed against persons exporting figs from Attica or plundering the sacred fig-trees; but more prob. one who brings figs to light by shaking the tree, hence one who makes rich men yield up their fruit by informations and other vile arts—sykon, a fig, phainein, to show.] ”

“ Let the Sycophant, or Buffoon, the Satyrist, or the Good Companion, consider with himself, when his Body shall be laid in the Grave, and his Soul pass into another State of Existence, how much it will redound to his Praise to have it said of him, that no Man in England eat better, that he had an admirable Talent at turning his Friends into Ridicule, that no Body out-did him at an Ill-natured Jest, or that he never went to Bed before he had dispatched his third Bottle. ”

“ There are no snobs among the Latin races, but there is a worse animal, the sycophant, descended directly from the dinner-tables of ancient Rome. In old-fashioned houses there are often several of them, headed invariably by the "giornale ambulante," the walking newspaper, whose business it is to pick up items of news during the day in order to detail them to the family in the evening. There is a certain old princess who sits every evening with her needlework at the head of a long table in the dismal drawing-room of a gigantic palace. ”

“ Some of our readers may have seen, in India, a cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to death—no bad type of what happens in that country as often as fortune deserts one who has been great and dreaded. In an instant all the sycophants, who had lately been ready to lie for him, to forge for him, to pander for him, to poison for him, hasten to purchase the favor of his victorious enemies by accusing him. ”

“ As the cult of the Phytalidae sank into insignificance beside the greater mysteries, the term sycophant survived in popular language in the sense of an informer or denouncer, whose charges deserved but little consideration. L. Shadwell suggests that the real meaning is “fig-discoverer,” not “fig-informer,” referring to the blackmailer who discovers the “figs” (that is, the money) of the rich man and forces him to hand it over by the threat of bringing a criminal accusation against him. ”

“ I have found that there is no trade that does not involve some sort of swindle, and that such graft is justified to some extent by the stupidity that allows itself to be swindled. — You smile at my confessions, but you know in your heart that I am right.
— I am entirely of your opinion, my fair friend, replied Siegmund, who was just thinking how only yesterday he had defended the sycophant.
— Everyone, continued the other, seeks to make use of the miseries of his fellow-man in order to make smooth his own path through life; one man dresses to please his patron ”

“ Sycophants and flatterers are undesignedly treacherous and fickle. They are prone to admire inordinately at first, and not finding a constant supply of food for this kind of sickly appetite, take a distaste to the object of their idolatry. To be even with themselves for their credulity, they sharpen their wits to spy out faults, and are delighted to find that this answers better than their first employment. ”

“ Sycophants are also fond, when they meet, of dilating to their superiors on the errors of their inferiors; to their inferiors, they censure the faults of their superiors. Men of this kind are all wanting in fidelity to their lord, and in benevolence towards the people. ”

“ There are sycophants who take a pride in being seen in the train of a great man, as there are fops who delight to follow in the train of a beautiful woman (from a mere impulse of admiration and excitement of the imagination) without the smallest personal pretensions of their own. ”

“ But the sycophants who had hung to his heels like hand-fed dogs when power glorified him like a glistening garment and exalted him high above other men, turned out as all time-servers and cowardly courtiers always finish when the object of their transitory adulation falls with his belly in the dust. ”

“ Also those whom we call sycophants are of the confraternity, house and lineage of these curious persons, save only this difference there is, that sycophants inquire what evil any man hath either designed or committed; whereas our polypragmons hearken after and discover the very calamities and misadventures of their neighbours, which happen even against their will and purpose: and when they have so done, set them abroad to the view of the whole world.
Furthermore, it is said that the name aliterius came up first by occasion of this over-much meddling, called curiosity. ”

“ It is also strange that intelligent men, will like sycophants, toady to these self-made gods, worship and bow down before them, and consider it one of the greatest favors to be admitted to their presence and receive but a word or a look from them. ”

“ Siegmund stood at a bend where heath blossomed in shaggy lilac, where the sunshine but no wind came. He saw the blue bay curl away to the far-off headland. A few birds, white and small, circled, dipped by the thin foam-edge of the water; a few ships dimmed the sea with silent travelling; a few small people, dark or naked-white, moved below the swinging birds. ”

“ But yonder, we see, yet towers the Sycamore on the crown of the hill—the first great Tree in the parish that used to get green; for stony as seems the hard glebe, constricted by its bare and gnarled roots, they draw sustenance from afar; and not another knoll on which the sun so delights to pour his beams. Weeks before any other Sycamore, and almost as early as the alder or the birch—the $1, for so we schoolboys called it, unfolded itself like a banner. ”

“ Reaching the ground, he shook his head. “That man's trail is surely hard to anticipate,” he said. “But I must hurry up that fire. For his appearance has given me encouragement,” Scipio concluded, and became brisk. Shorty helped him, and I brought wood. Trampas and the other people strolled off to the station, a compact band.
Our little fire was built beside the caboose, so the cooking things might be easily reached and put back. You would scarcely think such operations held any interest, even for the hungry, when there seemed to be nothing to cook. ”

“ The syphon began a steady flow.
"You won't make it," remarked Ferris. "And if you do get there, what then? There's no place for you on the Moon. They'll track you down in a few days."
Siegal laughed. "You seem quite certain of all this."
"Besides," went on Ferris, "I'll tell them all about you. They'll know just where you are, and they'll be waiting for you when you reach the Moon."
"Not if I destroy your radio," said Siegal, "and not if you ride the station back to Earth."
For a long minute there was silence. The only sound was the trickling of the liquid fuel. ”

“ There was an eye, however, which did note the strong-man's actions and brand them as suspicious. This was the innocent, amber optic of Scipio, the five-year-old orang-outang. Affectionate, curious, sedate,—not yet come to those years of viciousness which invariably overtake his kind in captivity—the baby ape-man sprawled upside down before the monkey-cage on a cast-off automobile cushion, head hanging off, meditatively picking his teeth with a straw. ”

“ Yet, clumsy as its gait appeared, it was scarcely an instant before the bloody muzzle and red glaring eyes were thrust into the hole down which the chipmunk had disappeared. Much can be done, however, even in seconds, with a hair-trigger brain and nerves and muscles tensed by the fear of death. Like a flash, Chippy traversed the main passage of his burrow, dashed into a tunnel that forked off to the right, and then dived into a smaller branch, which angled off sharply from the larger tube. ”

“ They went like great burning bees in an endless file into a hive, past those which were drifting dreamily out, while below, on the black, distorted water, golden serpents flashed and twisted to and fro.
“Ah!” said Siegmund to himself; “it is far too wonderful for me. Here, as well as by the sea, the night is gorgeous and uncouth. Whatever happens, the world is wonderful.” ”

“ But the thought of his own expunging from the picture was very bitter.
“Like the puff from the steamer’s funnel, I should be gone.”
He looked at himself, at his limbs and his body in the pride of his maturity. He was very beautiful to himself.
“Nothing, in the place where I am,” he said. “Gone, like a puff of steam that melts on the sunshine.”
Again Siegmund looked at the sea. It was glittering with laughter as at a joke.
“And I,” he said, lying down in the warm sand, “I am nothing. I do not count; I am inconsiderable.” ”

“ That leopard of the Indiana woods, the sycamore, repeated itself in vistas.
"Sycamores always look like dazzling marble shafts blackened with patches of moss," said the young man.
"And their leaves," said the girl sitting on the log not far from him, "smell like poetry. I spread them on my face late in summer after a shower and suck up their breath. But I never can put the sensation into words."
"How's that for a sycamore?" he asked, showing a scrap.
She examined it with great satisfaction: "Why do you go about with a photographic car? Why don't you set out to be an artist?" ”

“ Siegmund had found a white cave welling with green water, brilliant and full of life as mounting sap. The white rock glimmered through the water, and soon Siegmund shimmered also in the living green of the sea, like pale flowers trembling upward.
“The water,” said Siegmund, “is as full of life as I am,” and he pressed forward his breast against it. He swam very well that morning; he had more wilful life than the sea, so he mastered it laughingly with his arms, feeling a delight in his triumph over the waves. ”

“ Then, whistling off the setter, who was barking, jumping, and whining ecstatically at the foot of the sycamore-tree, he turned and strode away through the moon-shadows of the forest, with the dog and the hired boy at his heels. The diminished raccoon family, with beating hearts and trembling nerves, snuggled down together into the depths of the sycamore, and dreamed not of the doom preparing for them. ”

“ In the morning, after bathing, Siegmund leaned upon the seawall in a kind of reverie. It was late, towards nine o’clock, yet he lounged, dreamily looking out on the turquoise blue water, and the white haze of morning, and the small, fair shadows of ships slowly realizing before him. In the bay were two battleships, uncouth monsters, lying as naïve and curious as sea-lions strayed afar. ”

“ He still cherished the belief that Syphax was getting tired of the girl56 for whose sake he had joined the Carthaginians, and of his alliance with the Punic people generally; for the Numidians, he knew, were naturally quick to feel satiety, and constant neither to gods nor men. Scipio’s mind, however, was distracted with various anxieties, and his prospects were far from seeming secure to him; for he shrank from an engagement in the open field on account of the enemy’s great superiority in numbers. ”

“ For the sun and the white flower of the bay were breathing and kissing him dry, were holding him in their warm concave, like a bee in a flower, like himself on the bosom of Helena, and flowing like the warmth of her breath in his hair came the sunshine, breathing near and lovingly: yet, under all, was this deep mass of cold, that the softness and warmth merely floated upon.
Siegmund lay and clasped the sand, and tossed it in handfuls till over him he was all hot and cloyed. Then he rose and looked at himself and laughed. ”

“ On the left of the box walk, in a direct line from the three aspens, towered a huge sycamore, and from one of its protecting arms, shaded by large fan-like leaves, a child's swing dangled by a thick hemp rope. Near the sycamore, where an old oak had fallen, the rotting stump was hidden by a high "rockery," edged with conch shells, and over the rough gray rocks a tangle of garden flowers ran wild—sweet-william, petunias, phlox, and the mossy stems of red and yellow portulaca. ”

“ Such was the fellow-traveller of our hero. Captain Sycamore still continued the principal favourite of his fair pupil. Deeming the attention and regard of this worthy preceptor [243] the chief good, yet, being in her philosophy rather a peripatetic than a stoic, she considered it as the summum but not solum expetendum, the greatest but not the only blessing which life might afford. Though she was approaching Sycamore, still he was three hundred miles off: here was a very fine young man close by her; besides, soldiers might, in change of scene, be inconstant. ”

“ She turned to him, and “Siegmund!” she said, in a voice of great sorrow and pleading.
He took her in his arms, but did not kiss her, though she lifted her face. He put his mouth against her throat, below the ear, as she offered it, and stood looking out through the ravel of her hair, dazed, dreamy.
The sea was smoking with darkness under half-luminous heavens. The stars, one after another, were catching alight. Siegmund perceived first one, and then another dimmer one, flicker out in the darkness over the sea. He stood perfectly still, watching them. ”

“ Siegmund looked at himself with disapproval, though his body was full of delight and his hands glad with the touch of himself. He wanted himself clean. He felt the sand thick in his hair, even in his moustache. He went painfully over the pebbles till he found himself on the smooth rock bottom. Then he soused himself, and shook his head in the water, and washed and splashed and rubbed himself with his hands assiduously. He must feel perfectly clean and free—fresh, as if he had washed away all the years of soilure in this morning’s sea and sun and sand. ”