Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/154

148 paying more attention to Malcolm than to his words, "to give a violent wrench to the conversation, and turn it upon yourself. You can't be surprised, and I hope you will not be annoyed, if I say you strike one as not altogether like your calling. No London groom I have ever spoken to in the least resembles you. How is it?"

"I hope you don't mean to imply, sir, that I don't know my business?" returned Malcolm, laughing.

"Anything but that. It were nearer the thing to say that, for all I know, you may understand mine as well."

"I wish I did, sir. Except the pictures at Lossie House and those in Portland Place, I've never seen one in my life. About most of them I must say I find it hard to imagine what better the world is for them. Mr. Graham says that no work that doesn't tend to make the world better makes it richer. If he were a heathen, he says, he would build a temple to Ses, the sister of Psyche."

"Ses? — I don't remember her," said Lenorme.

"The moth, sir — 'the moth and the rust,' you know."

"Yes, yes — now I know. Capital! Only more things may tend to make the world better than some people think. Who is this Mr. Graham of yours? He must be no common man."

"You are right there, sir: there is not another like him in the whole world, I believe." And thereupon Malcolm set himself to give the painter an idea of the schoolmaster.

When they had talked about him for a little while, "Well, all this accounts for your being a scholar," said Lenorme; "but ——"

"I am little enough of that, sir," interrupted Malcolm. "Any Scotch boy that likes to learn finds the way open to him."

"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 say's 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."

"Come, now," said Lenorme, growing more and more interested in his new 