But Socrates would swear by Hercules, or by the dog, or by some other classic object, that he had an engagement with the rhetoricians, or with the sophists, or with Alcibiades, or with Crito, or with some of the rest of the boys--he called them philosophers, but we know what he meant by that. So it was toil and disappointment, disappointment and toil, from one month's end to another's; and so the years went by. Sometimes Xanthippe rebelled; but, with all her wit, how could she reason with Socrates, the most gifted and the wisest of all philosophers? He had a provoking way of practising upon her the exasperating methods of Socratic debate,--a system he had invented, and for which he still is revered. Never excited or angry himself, he would ply her with questions until she found herself entangled in a network of contradictions; and then she would be driven, willy-nilly, to that last argument of woman--"because." Then Socrates--the brute!--would laugh at her, and would go out and sit on the front door-steps, and look henpecked. This is positively the meanest thing a man _can_ do! "Look at that poor man," said the wife of Edippus the cobbler. "I _do_ believe his wife is cruel to him: see how sad and lonesome he is." "Don't play with those Socrates children," said another matron. "Their mother must be a dreadful shiftless creature to let her young ones run the streets in such patched-up clothes." So up and down the street the neighbors gossiped--oh! it was very humiliating to Xanthippe. Meanwhile Helen lived in peace with Aristagoras the tinker. Their little home was cosey and comfortable. Xanthippe used to go to see them sometimes, but the sight of their unpretentious happiness made her even more miserable. Meanwhile, too, Xanthippe's old beau, Gatippus, had married; and from Thessaly came reports of the beautiful vineyard and the many wine-presses he had acquired. So Xanthippe's life became somewhat more than a struggle; it became a martyrdom. And the wrinkles came into Xanthippe's face, and Xanthippe's hair grew gray, and Xanthippe's heart was filled with the bitterness of disappointment. And the years, full of grind and of poverty and of neglect, crept wearily on. Time is the grim old collector who goes dunning for the abused wife, and Time finally forced a settlement with Socrates. Having loafed around Athens for many years to the neglect of his family, and having obtruded his views touching the immortality of the soul upon certain folk who believed that the first duty of a man was to keep his family from starving to death, Socrates was apprehended on a bench-warrant, thrown into jail, tried by a jury, and sentenced to die.