ough whether to her advantage or injury cannot now be
told.

The career of Socrates was wonderfully different from that of his
brilliant but unprincipled friend. While Alcibiades was seeking to
dazzle and control, Socrates was seeking to convince and improve
mankind. A striking picture is given us of the physical qualities of
this great moral philosopher. His ugliness of face was matter of jest in
Athens. He had the flat nose, thick lips, and prominent eyes of a satyr.
Yet he was as strong as he was ugly. Few Athenians could equal him in
endurance. While serving as a soldier, he was able to endure heat and
cold, hunger and fatigue, in a manner that astonished his companions. He
went barefoot in all weather, and wore the same clothing winter and
summer. His diet was of the simplest, but in religious festivals, when
all were expected to indulge, Socrates could drink more wine than any
person present, without a sign of intoxication. Yet it was his constant
aim to limit his wants and to avoid all excess.

To these qualities of body Socrates added the highest and noblest
qualities of mind. Naturally he had a violent temper, but he held it
under severe control, though he could not always avoid a display of
anger under circumstances of great provocation. But his depth of
thought, his remarkable powers of argument, his earnest desire for human
amendment, his incessant moral lessons to the Athenians, place him in
the very first rank of the teachers of mankind.

Socrates was of humble birth. He was born 469 B.C. and lived for seventy
years. His father was a sculptor, and he followed the same profession.
He married, and his wife Xanthippe has become famous for the acidity of
her temper. There is little doubt that Socrates, whose life was spent in
arguing and conversing, and who paid little attention to filling the
larder, gave the poor housewife abundant provocation. We know very
little about the events of his life, except that he served as a soldier
in three campaigns, that he strictly obeyed the laws, performed all his
religious duties, and once, when acting as judge, refused, at the peril
of his life, to perform an unjust action.

Of the daily life of Socrates we have graphic pictures, drawn by his
friends and followers Xenophon and Plato. From morning to night he might
be seen in the streets and public places, engaged in endless
talk,--prattling, his enemies called it. In the early morning, his
sturdy figure, shabbily dres