Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/365

 wear high boots in time of frost, and who keeps off the East wind with skins tm-ned inwards, will never wish to do a forbidden thing; it is purple raiment, whatever it be, foreign and unknown to us, that leads to crime and wickedness."

Such were the maxims which those ancients taught the young; but now, when autumn days are over, the father houses his sleeping son after midnight with a shout; "Awake, boy, and take your tablets; scribble away and get up your cases; read through the red-lettered laws of our forefathers, or send in a petition for a centurion's vine-staff. See that Laelius notes your uncombed head and hairy nostrils, and admires your broad shoulders; destroy the huts of the Moors and the forts of the Brigantes, that your sixtieth year may bring you the eagle that will make you rich. Or if you are too lazy to endure the weary labours of the camp, if the sound of horn and trumpet melts your soul within you, buy something that you can sell at half as much again; feel no disgust at a trade that must be banished to the other side of the Tiber; make no distinction between hides and unguents; the smell of gain is good whatever the thing from which it comes. Let this maxim be ever on your lips, a saying worthy of the Gods, and of Jove himself if he turned poet; 'No matter whence the money comes, but money you must have.' " These are the lessons taught by skinny old nurses to little boys before they can walk; this is what every girl learns before her A B C!

To any father urging precepts such as these I would say this; "Tell me, O emptiest of men, who bids you hurry? The disciple, I warrant you, will 279