'Because I have but one eye, am I incapable of vision? Am I to be reproached with my misfortunes? One eye is the same as two; who sees two images except he squint? I can describe that wain, loaded down with wine casks, drawn by four horses with scarlet trappings, the driver with a sweeping Juno's favor in his cap, as justly as you can. Who can see more?' 'I thought not, Spurius, of your misfortune, though I must think two eyes better for seeing than one, but only of favorable opportunities for observation. You were in Palmyra from the ides of January to the nones of February, and lived in a tavern. I have been there more than half a year, and dwelt among the citizens themselves. I knew them in public and in private, and saw them under all circumstances most favorable to a just opinion, and I can affirm that a more discolored picture of a people was never drawn than yours.' 'All the world,' said the creature, 'knows that Spurius is no flatterer. I have not only published travels among the Palmyrenes, but I intend to publish a poem also--yes, a satire--and if it should be entitled "Woman's pride humbled," or "The downfall of false greatness" or "The gourd withered in a day," or "Mushrooms not oaks," or "Ants not elephants," what would there be wonderful in it?--or, if certain Romans should figure largely in it, eh?' 'Nothing is less wonderful, Spurius, than the obstinacy and tenaciousness of error?' 'Periander greater than Aurelian!' rejoined he, moving off; 'that is a good thing for the town.' As I turned, intending to visit the shop of Demetrius, to see what progress he was making in his silver Apollo, I was accosted by the consul, Marcellinus. 'A fair morning to you, Piso,' said he; 'and I see you need the salutation and the wish, for a black cloud has just drifted from you, and you must still feel as if under the shadow. Half the length of the street, as I slowly approached, have I witnessed your earnest discourse with one whom, I now see, to have been Spurius. But I trust your Christian principles are not about to make an agrarian of you? Whence this sudden intimacy with one like Spurius?' 'One need not, I suppose, be set down as a lover of an east wind because they both sometimes take the same road, and can scarcely separate if they would? But, to speak the truth, a man is to me a man, and I never yet have met one of the race from whom I could not gain either amusement, instruction, or warning. Spurius is better than a lecture from a philosopher, upon the odiousness of prejudice. To any one inclined to harbor prejudices would I recommend an hour's interview with Spurius, sooner far than I would send him to Cleanthes the Stoic, or Silius the Platonist, or, I had almost said Probus the Christian.'