Page:In Spite of Epilepsy, Woods, 1913.djvu/32

26 to appeal to the tribunes of the people. This he did merely by way of trying his forensic wings, and to show that his oratory, unlike the ordinary sort, was more than vocabulary.

Plutarch tells us that the eloquence he exhibited in Rome in also defending persons implicated in crime gained for him a considerable interest. His sword was double-edged. His engaging address and conservatism carried the heart of the people, "for he had a condescension to his elders not to be expected in so young a man." What our Jeremiahs lament as the lost art of deferential respect for the white head seems by this time to have extended to the Imperial City, since this solitary instance of the opposite was exceptional enough to be put upon record.

We ourselves never could see that there was anything specially honorable in gray locks, rather there is dishonor in them unless their owner has done something commendable during his evidently long life. The frosty pole does not always imply venerableness, often the opposite. We know the possessors of not a few such who ought rather to be tarred and feathered than revered,—wretches, decrepit in iniquity, their white heads but emphasizing protracted depravity, a flag of but pretentious truce floating over impotent and incapable tyranny. When gray hair means a life spent in the service of man it's different.

But to return to Cæsar. He jilted the first woman he was engaged to, although she was of powerful family, and he divorced the next one, Cornelia,—the