From this sense of personal dignity, which made him at all times determined to keep out of the grasp of others, much of his brusqueness sprang. On the morning after he returned from his visit to Greece a fellow professor saw him on the opposite side of the street, and, hastening across, greeted him warmly: "So you have been home, Mr. Sophocles; and how did you find your mother?" "She was up an apple-tree," said Sophocles, confining himself to the facts of the case. A boy who snowballed him on the street he prosecuted relentlessly, and he could not be appeased until a considerable fine was imposed; but he paid the fine himself. Many a bold push was made to ascertain his age; yet, however suddenly the question came, or however craftily one crept from date to date, there was a uniform lack of success. "I see Allibone's Dictionary says you were born in 1805," a gentleman remarked. "Some statements have been nearer, and some have been farther from the truth." One day, when a violent attack of illness fell on him, a physician was called for diagnosis. He felt the pulse, he examined the tongue, he heard the report of the symptoms, then suddenly asked, "How old are you, Mr. Sophocles?" With as ready presence of mind and as pretty ingenuity as if he were not lying at the point of death, Sophocles answered: "The Arabs, Dr. W., estimate age by several standards. The age of Hassan, the porter, is reckoned by his wrinkles; that of Abdallah, the physician, by the lives he has saved; that of Achmet, the sage, by his wisdom. I, all my life a scholar, am nearing my hundredth year." To those who had once come close to Sophocles these little reserves, never asserted with impatience, were characteristic and endearing. I happen to know his age; hot irons shall not draw it from me.