But the next act of the comedy brings in Socrates, swearing by all his new divinities that he never met with so utterly hopeless a pupil, in the whole course of his experience, as this very late learner, who has no one qualification for a sophist except his want of honesty. He puts him through a quibbling catechism on the stage about measures, and rhythms, and grammar, all which he declares are necessary preliminaries to the grand science which Strepsiades desires to learn, although the latter very naïvely remonstrates against this superfluous education: he wants to learn neither music nor grammar, but simply how to defeat his creditors. At last his instructor gets out of patience, and kicks him off the philosophical premises as a hopeless dunce. By the advice of the Clouds the rejected candidate goes in search of his son, to attempt once more to persuade him to enter the schools, and learn the art which has proved too difficult for his father’s duller faculties. One step, indeed, the old gentleman has made in his education; he swears no more by Jupiter, and rebukes his son, when he does so, for entertaining such very old-world superstitions; somewhat to the astonishment of that elegant young gentleman, whose opinions (if he has any on such subjects) are not so far advanced in the way of scepticism. The latter is, however, at last persuaded to become his father’s substitute as the pupil of Socrates, though not without a warning on the young man’s part that he may one day come to rue it. On this head the father has no misgivings, but introduces him to the philosopher triumphantly as a scholar who is sure to do him credit--he was always a remarkable child:-- He was so very clever always, naturally; When he was but so high, now, he’d build mud houses, Cut out a boat, make a cart of an old shoe, And frogs out of pomegranate-stones--quite wonderful![34] And Socrates, after a sneer at the young gentleman’s fashionable lisp, admits him as a pupil, and undertakes to instruct him in this “new way of paying old debts.”