Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/459

You laugh at me for my rusticity and pretend to find unpolished locutions in my letters and a country heaviness in my wits. These are fearful accusations! But I do not fear them. Whatever the wealthy freedmen may pretend to believe, you will not confuse a philosophic frugality with avarice or ill breeding, nor will you look with contempt upon lettered idleness. Some day I must tell you of the gardens I have laid out here, the embellishments I have given them, the statues, friezes, and other decorations I have procured to render my rusticity a little less rustical. As to my solitude it is less absolute than you imagine. I have not only the company of many excellent and charming men always near me in their writings (which my agents procure for me from Athens and Rome) but I have close at hand an agreeable companion to my studies who is also a man of urbane conversation and philosophic morals. He is a teacher of rhetoric, the son of a Greek woman and a certain legatus legionis whose name I shall conceal; his mother, an inhabitant of a small township in Attica, bestowed on him the austere name of Diogenes. Whether she hoped to make her son honest by giving him the name of one who so vehemently claimed honesty as his peculiar virtue; or whether she attempted thus to excuse herself by insinuating the paternity of Jove; I am unable to tell you. But few men could less resemble the great cynic than this Diogenes. He is a large, not unhandsome man, with long, carefully trimmed beard and hair; his address is smiling and frank; his air quiet and self-contained; his learning not inconsiderable; his speech eloquent; his manner attractive and winning; as unlike that of the usual rhetor as it is dissimilar from that of his growling namesake. He was condemned by poverty to the misery of a wandering life, displaying to the gaping provincials his ware of Milesian tales and philosophical discourses, more glittering and sharp than sound and wise. He asked my hospitality one spring evening when he had missed his way; we had some conversation which so pleased me I begged him to stay several days. The days became months and finally I gave him a house and small estate, vacated by one of my freedmen, about three thousand yards from here. He visits me frequently, advises me in the pursuit of my studies, debates points of philosophy or literary subtlety with great ability and learning, assists and stimulates my appreciation of what is beautiful and excellent. His gratitude has caused him to take the cognomen of Tranquillanus, but indeed I look upon him as a friend, not as a client. I have made him quite