_Pythagoras._--First, I will clean out your mind, and wash out all the
rubbish.

_Customer._--Well, suppose that done, how do you proceed to refresh the
memory?

_Pythagoras._--First, by long repose and silence, speaking no word for
five whole years.

_Customer._--Why, look ye, my good fellow, you’d best go teach the dumb
son of Crœsus! I want to talk and not be a dummy. Well--but after this
silence, and these five years?

_Pythagoras._--You shall learn music and geometry.

_Customer._--A queer idea, that one must be a fiddler before one can be
a wise man!

_Pythagoras._--Then you shall learn the science of numbers.

_Customer._--Thank you, but I know how to count already.

_Pythagoras._--How do you count?

_Customer._--One, two, three, four----

_Pythagoras._--Ha! what you call four is ten, and the perfect triangle,
and the great oath by which we swear.