FRANKNESS
Most shameless of all, though each one of them says he needs nothing and bawls it abroad that only the wise man is rich, after a little he presents himself and asks for something, and is angry if he does not get it. It is just as if someone in royal robes, with a high turban and a diadem and all the other marks of kingly dignity, should play the mendicant, begging of men worse off than himself.
When they must needs receive a present, there is a great deal of talk to the effect that a man should be ready to share what he has, and that money does not matter: “What, pray, does gold or silver amount to, since it’ is not in any way better than pebbles on the sea-shore!”” But when someone in want of help, an old-time comrade and friend, goes and asks for a little of their plenty, he encounters silence, hesitancy, forgetfulness, and complete recantation of doctrines. Their numerous speeches about friendship, their “virtue’”’ and their “honour” have all gone flying off, I know not whither, winged words for certain, idly bandied about by them daily in their class-rooms.
