The boy Arius increased in stature, and learned, even before he had learned the alphabet, to think that he knew and loved the Lord. For from the time that he could talk, daily, after the little family had completed their healthful tasks, they spent an hour in repeating to him, and in teaching him to repeat after them, some simple passage out of the New Testament, so that the child had memorized a whole gospel before he had learned to read the written text, and become familiar with the general course of the Old Testament Scriptures, particularly with the salient and beautiful narratives wherewith the sacred word abounds. After he grew older his father taught him both to speak and write the Latin and Hebrew equivalent of every word in the Greek text; so that Arius acquired the three languages together. The father watched with intense and painful anxiety to ascertain whether the singular affliction which his mother’s terror of the python had entailed upon himself had been transmitted to his son, and rejoiced to see that, while some unmistakable traces thereof appeared in the boy’s voice and manner, they were so slight as not only not to be unpleasantly obtrusive, but were even attractive, as perhaps every marked peculiarity, which is of a graceful character, is attractive in a man. At twelve years of age, Arius was an unusually tall and slender lad, peculiar in the shape of his bold, shaggy head, peculiar in the length and litheness of his shapely neck, peculiar in the mesmeric luminosity of his dark and tender eyes, and in the singular but incisive sweetness of his voice. He spoke, wrote, and read Greek and Latin with fluency, and was well informed in the Hebrew tongue; and yet he was scarcely conscious of the fact that under his father’s wise and careful training he had been a student almost from his infancy, so steadily, easily, and gradually, had he progressed in the acquisition of knowledge. The New Testament written on parchments in the uncial text; the "Pastor of Hermas," which, in those days, was thought to be of almost apostolical authority; and copies of some of the letters of Polycarp, Irenæus, and Clement, were almost the only books which Ammonius owned, as the cost of a library in those days was enormous. From these they would read a few verses at a time, and translate them into Latin as they went along. A presbyter at Cyrene loaned them the Old Testament, from which the boy copied and memorized such parts as his father directed him to learn, as having the directest bearing upon the life and doctrine of Jesus. The boy did his full share of labor in all the working of the farm, and took the bath daily in the little bay on which it fronted (as in fact all the family were accustomed to do), and at night father, mother, and son, read and translated from the Scriptures; and occasionally the boy was made to stand up and repeat by rote the Apostles’ Creed, the Paternoster, the Prayer of Agur, the son of Jakeh, Paul’s beautiful hymn