th Aristagoras the tinker. Their
little home was cosey and comfortable. Xanthippe used to go to see
them sometimes, but the sight of their unpretentious happiness made her
even more miserable. Meanwhile, too, Xanthippe's old beau, Gatippus,
had married; and from Thessaly came reports of the beautiful vineyard
and the many wine-presses he had acquired. So Xanthippe's life became
somewhat more than a struggle; it became a martyrdom. And the wrinkles
came into Xanthippe's face, and Xanthippe's hair grew gray, and
Xanthippe's heart was filled with the bitterness of disappointment.
And the years, full of grind and of poverty and of neglect, crept
wearily on.

Time is the grim old collector who goes dunning for the abused wife,
and Time finally forced a settlement with Socrates.

Having loafed around Athens for many years to the neglect of his
family, and having obtruded his views touching the immortality of the
soul upon certain folk who believed that the first duty of a man was to
keep his family from starving to death, Socrates was apprehended on a
bench-warrant, thrown into jail, tried by a jury, and sentenced to die.

It was in this emergency that the great, the divine nobility of the
wife asserted itself. She had been neglected by this man, she had gone
in rags for him, she had sacrificed her beauty and her hopes and her
pride, she had endured the pity of her neighbors, she had heard her
children cry with hunger--ay, all for him; yet, when a righteous fate
o'ertook him, she forgot all the misery of his doing, and she went to
him to be his comforter.

Well, she could not have done otherwise, for she was a woman.

Where was his philosophy now? where his wisdom, his logic, his wit?
What had become of his disputatious and learned associates that not one
of them stood up to plead for the life of Socrates now? Why, the first
breath of adversity had blown them away as though they were but mist;
and, with these false friends scattered like the coward chaff they
were, grim old Socrates turned to Xanthippe for consolation.

She burdened his ears with no reproaches, she spoke not of herself.
Her thoughts were of him only, and it was to his chilled spirit that
she alone ministered. Not even the horrors of the hemlock draught
could drive her from his side, or unloose her arms from about his neck;
and when at last the philosopher lay stiff in death, it was Xanthippe
that bore away his corpse, and, with spices moistened