Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 1.djvu/147

 a cat. Ha! Socrates. Shall we call him Socrates, Socrates, Socrates?"

SOPHY.—"Socrates, Socrates!" Mop yawned.

WAIFE.—"He don't take to Socrates,—prosy!"

SOPHY.—"Ah, Mr. Merle's book about the Brazen Head, Friar Bacon! He must have been very wise."

WAIFE.—"Not bad; mysterious, but not recondite; historical, yet familiar. What does Mop say to it? Friar, Friar, Friar Bacon, sir,—Friar!"

SOPHY (coaxingly).—"Friar!"

Mop, evidently conceiving that appeal is made to some other personage, canine or human, not present, rouses up, walks to the door, smells at the chink, returns, shakes his head, and rests on his haunches, eying his two friends superciliously.

SOPHY.—"He does not take to that name."

WAIFE.—"He has his reasons for it; and indeed there are many worthy persons who disapprove of anything that savours of magical practices. Mop intimates that on entering public life one should beware of offending the respectable prejudices of a class."

Mr. Waife then, once more resorting to the recesses of scholastic memory, plucked therefrom, somewhat by the head and shoulders, sundry names reverenced in a by-gone age. He thought of the seven wise men of Greece, but could only recall the nomenclature of two out of the—even,—a sad proof of the distinction between collegiate fame and popular renown. He called Thales; he called Bion. Mop made no response. "Wonderful intelligence!" said Waife; "he knows that Thales and Bion would not draw!--obsolete."

Mop was equally mute to Aristotle. He pricked up his cars at Plato, perhaps because the sound was not wholly dissimilar from that of Ponto,—a name of which he might have had vague reminiscences. The Romans not having cultivated an original philosophy, though they contrived to produce great men without it, Waife passed by that perished people. He crossed to China, and tried Confucius. Mop had evidently never heard of him.

"I am at the end of my list, so far as the wise men are concerned," said Waife, wiping his forehead. "If Mop were to distinguish himself by valour, one would find heroes by the dozen,—Achilles, and Hector, and Julius Caesar, and Pompey, and Bonaparte, and Alexander the Great, and the Duke of Marlborough.