Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/435

 into the purple necks below, than for a man to say to himself, "I am falling, falling to ruin," and to turn pale, poor wretch, for a misdeed which the wife of his bosom may not know?

I used often, I remember, as a boy to smear my eyes with oil if I did not want to recite the noble speech of the dying Cato—a speech which would be much applauded by my idiot of a master, and that to which my father, sweating with delight, would have to listen with his invited friends. And very right too; for in those days it was my highest ambition to know how much the lucky sice would bring me, how much the ruinous ace would carry off; not to be baffled by the narrow neck of the jar, and not to be outdone by anyone in whipping the boxwood top.

But you have learnt how to distinguish the crooked from the straight; you have studied the doctrines of the learned Porch, daubed over with trousered Medes; those doctrines over which a sleepless and close-cropped youth, fed on beans and grand messes of porridge, nightly pores; and the letter which spreads out into Pythagorean branches has pointed out to you the steep path which rises on the right. And are you snoring still? yawning off 349