wine in the cup! To the glory of Rome and to your health, Publius
Cornelius Scipio, and to our last critical conjecture, my Aristarchus--
to subtle thinking and deep drinking!"

"To deep thinking and subtle drinking!" retorted the person thus
addressed, while he raised the cup, looked into the wine with his
twinkling eyes and lifted it slowly to his nose--a long, well-formed and
slightly aquiline nose--and to his thin lips.

"Oh! Aristarchus," exclaimed Euergetes, and he frowned. "You please me
better when you clear up the meaning of your poets and historians than
when you criticise the drinking-maxims of a king. Subtle drinking is
mere sipping, and sipping I leave to the bitterns and other birds that
live content among the reeds. Do you understand me? Among reeds, I say-
-whether cut for writing, or no."

"By subtle drinking," replied the great critic with perfect indifference,
as he pushed the thin, gray hair from his high brow with his slender
hand. "By subtle drinking I mean the drinking of choice wine, and did
you ever taste anything more delicate than this juice of the vines of
Anthylla that your illustrious brother has set before us? Your
paradoxical axiom commends you at once as a powerful thinker and
as the benevolent giver of the best of drinks."

"Happily turned," exclaimed Cleopatra, clapping her hands, "you here see,
Publius, a proof of the promptness of an Alexandrian tongue."

"Yes!" said Euergetes, "if men could go forth to battle with words
instead of spears the masters of the Museum in Alexander's city, with
Aristarchus at their head, they might rout the united armies of Rome and