years we have dwelt close together, and I have never felt impelled to
ask you what you could recall to mind about your youth, and how you were
led to grace. I learnt by accident that you were an Alexandrian, and had
been a heathen, and had suffered much for the faith, and with that I was
satisfied. Indeed you do not seem very ready to speak of those long
past days. Our neighbor should be as dear to us as our self, and who is
nearer to me than you? Aye, self and selfishness! There are many gulfs
on the road towards God."

"I have not much to tell," said Paulus. "But a man never forgets what
he once has been. We may cast the old man from us, and believe we have
shaken ourselves free, when lo! it is there again and greets us as an
old acquaintance. If a frog only once comes down from his tree he hops
back into the pond again."

"It is true, memory can never die!" cried the sick man. "I can not sleep
any more; tell me about your early life and how you became a Christian.
When two men have journeyed by the same road, and the moment of parting
is at hand, they are fain to ask each other's name and where they came
from."

Paulus gazed for some time into space, and then he began: "The
companions of my youth called me Menander, the son of Herophilus.
Besides that, I know for certain very little of my youth, for as I have
already told you, I have long since ceased to allow myself to think of
the world. He who abandons a thing, but clings to the idea of the thing,
continues--"

"That sounds like Plato," said Stephanus with a smile.

"All that heathen farrago comes back to me today," cried Paulus. "I
used to know it well, and I have often thought that his face must have
resembled that of the Saviour."

"But only as a beautiful song might resemble the voice of an angel,"
said Stephanus somewhat drily. "He who plunges into the depths of
philosophic systems--"

"That never was quite my case," said Paulus. "I did indeed go through
the whole educational course; Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic and Music--"

"And Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy," added Stephanus.

"Those were left to the learned many years since," continued Paulus,
"and I was never very eager for learning. In the school of Rhetoric I
remained far behind my fellows, and if Plato was dear to me I owe it to
Paedonomus of Athens, a worthy man whom my father engaged to teach us."

"They say he had been a great merchant," interrupted Stephanus. "Can
it be that you