“It was in this period that I made the acquaintance of an editor—­the first editor, in fact, of whom I know anything at all.  I was in Rhodes, and there was a learned man there named Andronicus, who was engaged in editing the works of Aristotle.  All the manuscripts and books which that great philosopher left behind him had been given to a friend, or trustee, and had passed from this person into the possession of others, so that for about a hundred years the world knew nothing of them.  Then they came into the hands of Andronicus, who undertook to edit them and get them into proper shape for publication.  I went to Andronicus, and as soon as he found I was a person qualified for such work, he engaged me as his assistant editor.  I held this position for several years, and two or three of the books of Aristotle I transcribed entirely with my own hand, properly shaping sentences and paragraphs, and very often making the necessary divisions.  From my experience with Andronicus, I am sure that none of the works of Aristotle were given to the world exactly as he wrote them, for we often found his manuscript copies very rough and disjointed so far as literary construction is concerned, but I will also say that we never interfered with his philosophical theories or his scientific statements and deductions.”

“In all that time thee never married?” asked Mrs. Crowder.

Crowder and I could not help laughing.

“I did not say so,” said he, “but I will say that, with one exception, I do not remember any interesting matrimonial alliances which occurred during the period of my literary labors.  I married a young woman of Rhodes, and gave her a very considerable establishment, which I was able to do, for Andronicus paid me much better than Herodotus had done; but she did not prove a very suitable helpmeet, and I believe she married me simply because I was in fairly good circumstances.  She soon showed that she preferred a young man to an elderly student, the greater part of whose time was occupied with books and manuscripts, and we had not been married a year when she ran away with a young goldsmith, and disappeared from Rhodes, as I discovered, on a vessel bound for Rome.  I resigned myself to my loss, and did not even try to obtain news of her.  I was too much engrossed in my work to be interested in a runaway wife.

“It was a little more than half a century after this that I was in Rome and sitting on the steps of one of the public buildings in the Forum.  I was waiting to meet some one with whom I had business, and while I sat there an old woman stopped in front of me.  She was evidently poor, and wretchedly dressed; her scanty hair was gray, and her face was wrinkled and shrunken.  I thought, of course, she was a beggar, and was about to give her something, when she clasped her hands in front of her and exclaimed, ‘How like!  How like!  How like!’ ‘Like whom?’ said I.  ’What are you talking about?’ ‘Like your father,’