"Pisistratus! a very fine name," said my mother, joyfully,--"Pisistratus Caxton. Thank you, my love: Pisistratus it shall be." "Do you contradict me? Do you side with Wolfe and Heyne and that pragmatical fellow Vico? Do you mean to say that the Rhapsodists--" "No, indeed," interrupted my mother. "My dear, you frighten me." My father sighed, and threw himself back in his chair. My mother took courage and resumed. "Pisistratus is a long name too! Still, one could call him Sisty." "Siste, Viator," muttered my father; "that's trite!" "No, Sisty by itself--short. Thank you, my dear." Four days afterwards, on his return from the book-sale, to my father's inexpressible bewilderment, he was informed that Pisistratus was growing the very image of him." When at length the good man was made thoroughly aware of the fact that his son and heir boasted a name so memorable in history as that borne by the enslaver of Athens and the disputed arranger of Homer,--and it was asserted to be a name that he himself had suggested,--he was as angry as so mild a man could be. "But it is infamous!" he exclaimed. "Pisistratus christened! Pisistratus, who lived six hundred years before Christ was born! Good heavens, madam! you have made me the father of an Anachronism." My mother burst into tears. But the evil was irremediable. An anachronism I was, and an anachronism I must continue to the end of the chapter. CHAPTER IV. "Of course, sir, you will begin soon to educate your son yourself?" said Mr. Squills. "Of course, sir," said my father, "you have read Martinus Scriblerus?" "I don't understand you, Mr. Caxton." "Then you have not read Aiartinus Scriblerus, Mr. Squills!" "Consider that I have read it; and what then?" "Why, then, Squills," said my father, familiarly, "you son would know that though a scholar is often a fool, he is never a fool so supreme, so superlative, as when he is defacing the first unsullied page of the human history by entering into it the commonplaces of his own pedantry. A scholar, sir,--at least one like me,--is of all persons the most unfit to teach young children. A mother, sir,--a simple, natural, loving mother,--is the infant's true guide to knowledge." "Egad! Mr. Caxton,--in spite of Helvetius, whom you quoted the night the boy was born,--egad! I believe you are right."