SOPHY (coaxingly).--"Friar!"

Mop, evidently conceiving that appeal is made to some other personage,
canine or human, not present, rouses up, walks to the door, smells at the
chink, returns, shakes his head, and rests on his haunches, eying his two
friends superciliously.

SOPHY.--"He does not take to that name."

WAIFE.--"He has his reasons for it; and indeed there are many worthy
persons who disapprove of anything that savours of magical practices.
Mop intimates that on entering public life one should beware of offending
the respectable prejudices of a class."

Mr. Waife then, once more resorting to the recesses of scholastic memory,
plucked therefrom, somewhat by the head and shoulders, sundry names
reverenced in a by-gone age. He thought of the seven wise men of Greece,
but could only recall the nomenclature of two out of the--even,--a sad
proof of the distinction between collegiate fame and popular renown. He
called Thales; he called Bion. Mop made no response. "Wonderful
intelligence!" said Waife; "he knows that Thales and Bion would not
draw!--obsolete."

Mop was equally mute to Aristotle. He pricked up his cars at Plato,
perhaps because the sound was not wholly dissimilar from that of Ponto,
--a name of which he might have had vague reminiscences. The Romans not
having cultivated an original philosophy, though they contrived to
produce great men without it, Waife passed by that perished people. He
crossed to China, and tried Confucius. Mop had evidently never heard of