“I am aware of that. But were you really reading Epictetus when we left you in the park this morning?” “Yes, sir: why not?” “In the original?” “Yes, sir; but not very readily. I am a poor Greek scholar. But my copy has a rough Latin translation on the opposite page, and that helps me out. It’s not difficult. You would think nothing of it if it had been Cornelius Nepos, or Cordery’s Colloquies. It’s only a better, not a more difficult book.” “I don’t know about that. It’s not every one who can read Greek that can understand Epictetus. Tell me what you have learned from him?” “That would be hard to do. A man is very ready to forget how he came first to think of the things he loves best. You see they are as much a necessity of your being as they are of the man’s who thought them first. I can no more do without the truth than Plato. It is as much my needful food and as fully mine to possess as his. His having it, Mr Graham says, was for my sake as well as his own. --It’s just like what Sir Thomas Browne says about the faces of those we love--that we cannot retain the idea of them because they are ourselves. Those that help the world must be served like their master and a good deal forgotten, I fancy. Of course they don’t mind it.--I remember another passage I think says something to the same purpose--one in Epictetus himself,” continued Malcolm, drawing the little book from his pocket and turning over the leaves, while Lenorme sat waiting, wondering, and careful not to interrupt him. He turned to the forty-second chapter, and began to read from the Greek. “I’ve forgotten all the Greek I ever had,” said Lenorme. Then Malcolm turned to the opposite page and began to read the Latin. “Tut! tut!” said Lenorme, “I can’t follow your Scotch pronunciation.” “That’s a pity,” said Malcolm: “it’s the right way.” “I don’t doubt it. You Scotch are always in the right! But just read it off in English--will you?” Thus adjured, Malcolm read slowly and with choice of word and phrase:-- “‘And if any one shall say unto thee, that thou knowest nothing, notwithstanding thou must not be vexed: then know thou that thou hast begun thy work.’--That is,” explained Malcolm, “when you keep silence about principles in the presence of those that are incapable of understanding them.--‘For the sheep also do not manifest to the shepherds how much they have eaten, by producing fodder; but, inwardly digesting their food, they produce outwardly wool and milk. And thou therefore set not forth principles before the unthinking, but the actions that result from the digestion of them.’--That last is not quite literal, but I think it’s about right,” concluded Malcolm, putting the book again in the breast pocket of his silver-buttoned coat. “--That’s the passage I thought of, but I see now it won’t apply. He speaks of not saying what you know; I spoke of forgetting where you got it.”