certain how these would turn out: but it would be long before I got
such another friend as Gyndanes; of his affection I have been
abundantly satisfied by experience.'

There, Mnesippus, you have _my_ little selection. The next
thing is to settle whether my hand or your tongue is to be
amputated. Who is umpire?

_Mne_. Umpire we have none; we forgot that. I tell you what:
we have wasted our arrows this time, but some other day we will
appoint an arbitrator, and submit other friendships to his
judgement; and then off shall come your hand, or out shall come my
tongue, as the case may be. Perhaps, though, this is rather a
primitive way of doing things. As you seem to think a great deal of
friendship, and as I consider it to be the highest blessing of
humanity, what is there to prevent our vowing eternal friendship on
the spot? We shall both have the satisfaction of winning then, and
shall get a substantial prize into the bargain: two right hands
each instead of one, two tongues, four eyes, four feet;--everything
in duplicate. The union of two friends--or three, let us say--is
like Geryon in the pictures: a six-handed, three-headed individual;
my private opinion is, that there was not one Geryon, but three
Geryons, all acting in concert, as friends should.

_Tox_. Done with you, then.

_Mne_. And, Toxaris,--we will dispense with the blood-and-
scimetar ceremony. Our present conversation, and the similarity of
our aims, are a much better security than that sanguinary cup of
yours. Friendship, as I take it, should be voluntary, not