"And dey call your baba a scholar!" said the Doctor contemptuously. "Your name, sir, is Greek; and, as Greek, you vill be dood enough to write it, vith vat you call an _e_ and an _o_--P, E, I, S, I, S, T, R, A, T, O, S; and you vill alway put de accent over de _i_. Vat can you expect for to come to, Master Caxton, if you don't pay de care dat is proper to your own dood name--de _e_, and de _o_, and de accent? Ach! let me see no more of your vile corruptions! Mein Gott! Pi! ven de name is Pei!" The next time I wrote home to my father, modestly implying that I was short of cash, that a trap-bat would be acceptable, and that the favourite goddess amongst the boys (whether Greek or Roman was very immaterial) was _Diva Moneta_, I felt a glow of classical pride in signing myself, "your affectionate Peísistratos." The next post brought a sad damper to my scholastic exultation. The letter ran thus: "MY DEAR SON,--I prefer my old acquaintances Thucydides and Pisistratus to Thoukudídes and Peísistratos. Horace is familiar to me, but Horatius is only known to me as Cocles. Pisistratus can play at trap-ball; but I find no authority in pure Greek to allow me to suppose that that game was known to Peísistratos. I should be too happy to send you a drachma or so, but I have no coins in my possession current at Athens at the time when Pisistratus was spelt Peísistratos. Your affectionate father, "A. CAXTON." Verily, here indeed was the first practical embarrassment produced by that melancholy anachronism which my father had so prophetically deplored. However, nothing like experience to prove the value of compromise in this world! Peísistratos continued to write exercises, and a second letter from Pisistratus was followed by the trap-bat. CHAPTER VIII. I was somewhere about sixteen when, on going home for the holidays, I found my mother's brother settled among the household lares. Uncle Jack, as he was familiarly called, was a light-hearted, plausible, enthusiastic, talkative fellow, who had spent three small fortunes in trying to make a large one.