I wrote, tore up, re-wrote, corrected, re-corrected, and again re-wrote. There was a want of directness in all my attempts, and they all ended in tearing up. At last I said, “I will try to write as my Master himself would have written.” That made my letter of the briefest. After explaining my sudden departure, and thanking him for his teaching, “I am your debtor,” I wrote, “and always shall be.” I was on the point of adding, “If ever I possess myself, I shall owe myself to you.” But the words struck me as familiar. Then I remembered something like them in the Epistle to Philemon: “I say not unto thee how that thou owest to me even thine own self.” Could I say with strict Epictetian truth that I owed to Epictetus as much as Philemon owed to Paul? I re-wrote it thus: “If ever I possess myself I shall in large measure owe myself to you.” That had the disadvantage of being a little longer, but the advantage of being quite true. Sealing the letter that I might not be tempted to alter it again, I threw myself down for two or three hours of rest. A little before noon my servant roused me. All was ready, and we went down at once to the quay. Besides the usual bustle—sailors, fishermen, merchants, passengers mostly in a hurry—there was some dispute (I know not what, but I think it was among the fishermen). This added to the confusion. Not many blows were interchanged, but there was no lack of threats, imprecations, scurrilous jests, and obscene abuse. As I was making my way through the crowd, some one touched me on the shoulder. It was my Epicurean friend, Apronius Rufus, whom I had last seen in the little village of Lycus, scattering nuts and figs to make the schoolboys scramble. I had caught sight of him, a minute or two before, lounging in a corner and looking on at the quarrelsome crowd; but being in no mood for his jests I had turned aside in the vain hope that he would not see me. As soon as he overtook me, he began in his usual fashion, “What brings you here at this hour, most serious Cynic? A truant humour, I fear. For it is lecture time, or at all events not much past: and Epictetus gives long lessons. Yet no. You are no truant. Truants don’t look so serious. You have come here as a philosopher, to see life as it is, and to set up as a heretic. You come from books to things; from ideals to facts. Good! Now begin to learn! Look at these bipeds! Look, and listen! Up above, in your schoolroom, they were ‘sons of God,’ were they not! Look, then, at that son of God hitting his brother son of God in the eye! Listen to those two daughters of God and their harmonious antiphon!”