you haven't gone to Athens yet?" said the King.

"No, but I am going," was the firm reply.

"We will send him," said the King to Proxenus, Aristo's guardian.

And so we find Aristo, aged seventeen, tall and straight and bronzed,
starting off for Athens, his worldly goods rolled up in a bearskin, tied
about with thongs. There is a legend to the effect that Philip went with
Aristo, and that for a time they were together at Plato's school. But,
anyway, Philip did not remain long. Aristo--or Aristotle, we had better
call him--remained with Plato just twenty years.

At Plato's school Aristotle was called by the boys, "the Stagirite," a
name that was to last him through life--and longer. In Winter he wore
his bearskin, caught over one shoulder, for a robe, and his mountain
grace and native beauty of mind and body must have been a joy to Plato
from the first. Such a youth could not be overlooked.

To him that hath shall be given. The pupil that wants to learn is the
teacher's favorite--which is just as it should not be. Plato proved his
humanity by giving his all to the young mountaineer. Plato was then a
little over sixty years of age--about the same age that Socrates was
when Plato became his pupil. But the years had touched Plato
lightly--unlike Socrates, he had endured no Thracian winters in bare
feet, neither had he lived on cold snacks picked up here and there, as
Providence provided. Plato was a bachelor. He still wore the purple
robe, proud, dignified, yet gentle, and his back was straight as that of
a youth. Lowell once said, "When I hear Plato's name mentioned, I always
think of George William Curtis--a combination of pride and intellect, a
man's strength fused with a woman's gentleness."

Plato was an aristocrat. He accepted only such pupils as he invited, or
those that were sent by royalty. Like Franz Liszt, he charged no
tuition, which plan, by the way, is a good scheme for getting more money
than could otherwise be obtained, although no such selfish charge should
be brought against either Plato or Liszt. Yet every benefit must be paid
for, and whether you use the word fee or honorarium, matters little. I
hear there be lecturers who accept invitations to banquets and accept an
honorarium mysteriously placed on the mantel, when they would scorn a
fee.

Plato's Garden School, where the pupils reclined under the trees on
marble benches, and read and talked, or listened to lectures by the
Master, was almost an