And he is always ready in case of default to use the right of seizure and to collect compound interest. When he gives a banquet to his townsmen he cuts the meat in small pieces and sets a portion before each guest. He goes to market, but buys nothing. He forbids his wife to lend salt or a lamp-wick or a pinch of cummin, marjoram, or meal, a fillet or a sacrificial wafer, observing that these trifles make a large sum in the course of a year. In a word, one may see that the mean man’s money chest is mouldy from being unopened, the key rusty, his cloak too scant to reach his thigh; that he uses a mean little oil jar, has his hair cropped to the scalp; he does not wear his boots until midday, and charges the fuller to use plenty of earth on his coat to keep it from soon getting soiled again. IX _The Stupid Man_ (Ἀναισθησία) Stupidity one may define as sluggishness in what a man says or does. The stupid man computes a sum, sets down the total, and then asks his neighbor: “How much does it all make?” When he is defendant in a suit and should go to court, he forgets all about it and puts off to his farm. When he goes to a play at the theatre he is the only spectator that is left behind on the benches asleep. He gets up in the night to go out, after he has gorged himself, and is bitten by the neighbor’s dog. He takes a thing and puts it away, but when he comes to look for it he cannot find it. If the death of a friend is announced to him that he may go to the funeral, with a sorrowful air and tears in his eyes he says: “Thank God!” When he goes to receive payment of a debt, he takes witnesses with him. In the winter season he quarrels with his slave because cucumbers have not been provided. He forces his children to wrestle and to run until they fall into a fever. When he is roughing it in the country and himself cooks the vegetables, he puts salt in the pot twice and so makes the dish impossible. When it rains and others declare that the sky is darker than pitch, he exclaims: “How sweet it is to consider the stars!” And if he is asked, what is the mortality of the city,—how many bodies have passed through the Sacred Gates,—he replies: “Would that you and I had as many.” X _The Surly Man_ (Αὐθάδεια) Surliness is sullen rudeness of speech. The surly man is one who, when you ask him, “Who is that gentleman?” retorts “Don’t bother me!” and when you greet him on the street refuses to return your salutation. When he has anything for sale, he will not tell the purchaser what he charges, but instead inquires, “How much do I get for it?” When one would show him some attention and sends him a gift for the holidays, he says he is not in need of presents.