“Horrible, it must be!” I shuddered. “What a dark tragedy to lighten a college stage!”
“But,” mused Quarles, “think of the achievement, in these days, when the college critics are charging the college with immersing itself in practical concerns so as to forego the classics. My work is cut out for me, Priddy,” he went on. “If they are to have a real blind man for Teiresias, they must also have fair acting of the lines, for it is all to be given in Greek, not a word of English; for barbarians like you, who will probably be mystified, there will be an English line-for-line translation.”
“Oh,” I retorted, “I have studied some Greek. I have read the New Testament!”
Quarles laughed,
“That is only the introduction to Greek. Listen!”
He stood before me and recited the fluid, rounded, Greek lines of the blind Prophet, as he leaves the King,
“‘Ere I depart, I will declare the word
For which I came, not daunted by thy frown.
Thou hast no power to ruin me.’”
“You will have to have a clear brain for the storing of so much pure, classic speech, Quarles,” I said. “Come out for a walk over the four-mile road with me and you may talk King Œdipus to me till I faint!”