These
were heads of ancient worthies[1]--Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates, Seneca,
and Cicero, whom, from a prejudice acquired at school, I shortly
banished again with a _quousque tandem!_ Besides those I have mentioned,
there were Democritus and Heraclitus, which last, in those days less the
slave of tradition, I called Heraclitus--an error which my excellent
schoolmaster (I thank him for it) would have expelled from my head by
the judicious application of a counter-irritant; for he regarded the
birth as a kind of usher to the laurel, as indeed the true tree of
knowledge, whose advantages could Adam have enjoyed during early life,
he had known better than to have yielded to the temptation of any other.
[Footnote 1: Some readers may recall the reference to these "heads of
ancient wise men" in "An Interview with Miles Standish."--C.E.N.]
Well, over my chimney hung those two antithetical philosophers--the one
showing his teeth in an eternal laugh, while the tears on the cheek of
the other forever ran, and yet, like the leaves on Keats's Grecian urn,
could never be shed. I used to wonder at them sometimes, believing, as I
did firmly, that to weep and laugh had been respectively the sole
business of their lives. I was puzzled to think which had the harder
time of it, and whether it were more painful to be under contract for
the delivery of so many tears _per diem_, or to compel that [Greek:
anerithmon gelasma][1] I confess, I pitied them both; for if it be
difficult to produce on demand what Laura Matilda would call the "tender
dew of sympathy," he is also deserving of compassion who is expected to
be funny whether he will or no.
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