ever it was.

And here let me ask you whether, putting aside his discourse, you would
choose to resemble your master, and be as passionate, as sordid, as
quarrelsome, ay, and as addicted to pleasure (though that trait of his is
not generally known). Why no answer, Hermotimus? Shall I tell you a plea
for philosophy which I lately heard? It was from the mouth of an old, old
man, who has quite a company of young disciples. He was angrily demanding
his fees from one of these; they were long overdue, he said; the day
stated in the agreement was the first of the month, and it was now the
fifteenth.

The youth's uncle was there, a rustic person without any notion of your
refinements; and by way of stilling the storm, _Come, come, sir_, says he,
_you need not make such a fuss because we have bought words of you and not
yet settled the bill. As to what you have sold us, you have got it still;
your stock of learning is none the less; and in what I really sent the boy
to you for, you have not improved him a bit; he has carried off and
seduced neighbour Echecrates's daughter, and there would have been an
action for assault, only Echecrates is a poor man; but the prank cost me a
couple of hundred. And the other day he struck his mother; she had tried
to stop him when he was smuggling wine out of the house, for one of his
club-dinners, I suppose. As to temper and conceit and impudence and brass
and lying, he was not half so bad twelve months ago as he is now. That is
where I should have liked him to profit by your teaching; and we could
have done, without his knowing the stuff he reels of at table every day:
'a crocodile [Footnote: See _Puzzles_ in Notes.] seized hold of a baby,'
says he, 'and promised to give it back if its father could answer'--the
Lord knows what; or how, 'day [Footnote: See _Puzzles_ in Notes.] being,
night cannot be'; and sometimes his worship twists round what we say