Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great

eyes in comic protest at the audiences as he was being led away captive, but no resentment was shown. He had the strength of a Hercules, but he was a far better non-resistant than Tolstoy, because he took his medicine with a wink, while Fate is obliged to hold the nose of the author of "Anna Karenina," who never sees the comedy of an inward struggle and an outward compliance, any more than does the benedict, safely entrenched under the bed, who shouts out, "I defy thee, I defy thee!" as did Mephisto when Goethe thrust him into Tophet.

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The popular belief is that Xantippe, the wife of Socrates, was a shrew, and had she lived in New England in Cotton Mather's time would have been a candidate for the ducking-stool. Socrates said he married her for discipline. A man in East Aurora, however, has recently made it plain to himself that Xantippe was possessed of a great and acute intellect. She knew herself, and she knew her liege as he never did--he was too close to his subject to get the pers