you to be short enough?

I have heard, I said, that you can speak and teach others to speak about
the same things at such length that words never seemed to fail, or with
such brevity that no one could use fewer of them. Please therefore, if you
talk with me, to adopt the latter or more compendious method.

Socrates, he replied, many a battle of words have I fought, and if I had
followed the method of disputation which my adversaries desired, as you
want me to do, I should have been no better than another, and the name of
Protagoras would have been nowhere.

I saw that he was not satisfied with his previous answers, and that he
would not play the part of answerer any more if he could help; and I
considered that there was no call upon me to continue the conversation; so
I said: Protagoras, I do not wish to force the conversation upon you if
you had rather not, but when you are willing to argue with me in such a way
that I can follow you, then I will argue with you. Now you, as is said of
you by others and as you say of yourself, are able to have discussions in
shorter forms of speech as well as in longer, for you are a master of
wisdom; but I cannot manage these long speeches: I only wish that I could.
You, on the other hand, who are capable of either, ought to speak shorter
as I beg you, and then we might converse. But I see that you are
disinclined, and as I have an engagement which will prevent my staying to
hear you at greater length (for I have to be in another place), I will
depart; although I should have liked to have heard you.

Thus I spoke, and was rising from my seat, when Callias seized me by the
right hand, and in his left hand caught hold of this old cloak of mine. He
said: We cannot let you go, Socrates, for if you leave us there will be an