Laboring with his hands, recalling texts of Scripture, praying whole
sleepless nights, fasting for several days at a time, visiting his
fellow saints, fighting demons, so passed the long years away. He slept
on a small rush mat, more often on the bare ground. Forgetting past
austerities, he was ever on the search for some new torture and pressing
forward to new and strange experiences. He changed his habitation from
time to time. Now he lived in a tomb, in company with the silent dead;
then for twenty years in a deserted castle, full of reptiles, never
going out and rarely seeing any one. From each saint he learned some
fresh mode of spiritual training, observing his practice for future
imitation and studying the charms of his Christian character that he
might reproduce them in his own life; thus he would return richly laden
to his cell.

But in all these struggles Anthony had one foe--the arch-enemy of all
good. He suggests impure thoughts, but the saint repels them by prayer;
he incites to passion, but the hero resists the fiend with fastings and
faith. Once the dragon, foiled in his attempt to overcome Anthony,
gnashed his teeth, and coming out of his body, lay at his feet in the
shape of a little black boy. But the hermit was not beguiled into
carelessness by this victory. He resolved to chastise himself more
severely. So he retired to the tombs of the dead. One dark night a crowd
of demons flogged the saint until he fell to the ground speechless with
torture. Some friends found him the next day, and thinking that he was
dead, carried him to the village, where his kinsfolk gathered to mourn
over his remains. But at midnight he came to himself, and, seeing but
one acquaintance awake, he begged that he would carry him back to the
tombs, which was done. Unable to move, he prayed prostrate and sang, "If
an host be laid against me, yet shall not my heart be afraid." The
enraged devils made at him again. There was a terrible crash; through