The Words of the Elders, to which I have already alluded, and the
Lausiaca of Palladius likewise, are full of precious scraps of moral
wisdom, sayings, and anecdotes, full of nobleness, purity, pathos,
insight into character, and often instinct with a quiet humour,
which seems to have been, in the Old world, peculiar to the
Egyptians, as it is, in the New, almost peculiar to the old-
fashioned God-fearing Scotsman.

Take these examples, chosen almost at random.

Serapion the Sindonite was so called because he wore nothing but a
sindon, or linen shirt. Though he could not read, he could say all
the Scriptures by heart. He could not (says Palladius) sit quiet in
his cell, but wandered over the world in utter poverty, so that he
"attained to perfect impassibility, for with that nature he was
born; for there are differences of natures, not of substances."

So says Palladius, and goes on to tell how Serapion sold himself to
certain play-actors for twenty gold pieces, and laboured for them as
a slave till he had won them to Christ, and made them renounce the
theatre; after which he made his converts give the money to the
poor, and went his way.

On one of his journeys he came to Athens, and, having neither money
nor goods, starved there for three days. But on the fourth he went
up, seemingly to the Areopagus, and cried, "Men of Athens, help!"
And when the crowd questioned him, he told them that he had, since
he left Egypt, fallen into the hands of three usurers, two of whom
he had satisfied, but the third would not leave him.