in praise of Agape, or some other favorite passage, sometimes in one language and sometimes in another. In these little recitations, as often as the boy’s feelings were enlisted, there came a peculiar and fascinating sibilation into his voice; his hand, chiefly the right hand, would move and wave with a strange, easy, vibrant motion, almost as if it involuntarily strove to accentuate the syllables of the sonorous text; his head would dart up and lean slightly forward from the long and shapely neck, like the crest of some splendid cobra, peering forward toward the hearer, and his dark eyes dilated with a strange mesmeric light; and altogether the lad had a very peculiar and impressive appearance. But these slight hereditary traces of the python’s influence were never unpleasantly obtrusive, and the father did not think it to be necessary to impose upon the son that life-long self-restraint and self-consciousness which, in his own case, had been requisite to guard himself against serpentine manifestations of emotion. But his own long and careful effort and study in this respect qualified him to impart to the boy a marvelously distinct and peculiar accentuation, which made every word he uttered as clear and perfect as a pearl--as distinct and resonant as trumpet-notes. But while Ammonius was thus cautious and diligent in training his son to acquire critical exactness in his knowledge of the philology and history of the sacred text, he was not the less anxious to imbue his mind with the very spirit that distills upon the faithful heart out of the words of uncorrupted truth. This he strove to do by continually spurring the boy’s intelligence to seek for the real significance of our Lord’s life and teachings, the differences between his philosophy and ethics and those of other renowned moralists and teachers; the essential differences between the kingdom which Jesus established in the world and all worldly kingdoms; the great fact, indeed, that Jesus taught not only the purest ethics in a few sweeping principles which cover the whole range of human life and experience, but taught also social and political truth essential to the establishment and maintenance of human rights and liberty. Yet the man’s instructions were not dogmatic; they belonged to no sect or system of religion or of philosophy; they consisted chiefly in exciting in the mind of the youth an honest desire to know the truth, and of questions and suggestions designed to aid him in discovering it for himself. The manner of instruction generally pursued by Ammonius may be gathered from one or two of their evening exercises, like the following.