“That was a strange song of yours,” said I, after a while.

“Did you like it?” he inquired, with a quick tilt of his head.

“Both words and tune,” I answered.

“I made the words myself,” said the Tinker.

“And do you mean it?”

“Mean what?” asked the Tinker.

“That you would rather be a tinker than a king?”

“Why, to be sure I would,” he rejoined.  “Bein’ a literary cove I know summat o’ history, and a king’s life weren’t all lavender—­not by no manner o’ means, nor yet a bed o’ roses.”

“Yet there’s much to be said for a king.”

“Very little, I think,” said the Tinker.

“A king has great advantages.”

“Which he generally abuses,” said the Tinker.

“There have been some great and noble kings.”

“But a great many more bad ’uns!” said the Tinker.  “And then, look how often they got theirselves pisoned, or stabbed, or ’ad their ’eads chopped off!  No—­if you axes me, I prefer to tinker a kettle under a hedge.”

“Then you are contented?”

“Not quite,” he answered, his face falling; “me being a literary cove (as I think I’ve mentioned afore), it has always been my wish to be a scholar.”

“Far better be a tinker,” said I.

“Young fellow,” said the Tinker, shaking his head reprovingly, “you’re off the mark there—­knowledge is power; why, Lord love my eyes and limbs! what’s finer than to be able to read in the Greek and Latin?”

“To possess the capacity of earning an honest livelihood,” said I.

“Why, I tell you,” continued the Tinker, unheeding my remark, “I’d give this here left hand o’ mine to be able to read the very words of such men as Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Xenophon, and all the rest of ’em.”

“There are numerous translations,” said I.

“Ah, to be sure!” sighed the Tinker, “but then, they are translations.”

“There are good translations as well as bad,” said I.

“Maybe,” returned the Tinker, “maybe, but a translation’s only a echo, after all, however good it be.”  As he spoke, he dived into his pack and brought forth a book, which he handed to me.  It was a smallish volume in battered leathern covers, and had evidently seen much long and hard service.  Opening it at the title-page, I read: 

Epictetus
his
enchiridion
with
Simplicius
his
comment. 
Made English from the Greek
By
George Stanhope, late Fellow
Of King’s College in Camb. 
London
Printed for Richard Sare at Gray’s Inn Gate in Holborn And Joseph Hindmarsh against the Exchange in Cornhill.
1649.

“You’ve read Epictetus, perhaps?” inquired the Tinker.

“I have.”

“Not in the Greek, of course.”

“Yes,” said I, smiling, “though by dint of much labor.”

The Tinker stopped chewing to stare at me wide-eyed, then swallowed his mouthful at one gulp.