My father sighed, and threw himself back in his chair. My mother took courage and resumed.
“Pisistratus is a long name too! Still, one could call him Sisty.”
“Siste, Viator,” muttered my father; “that’s trite!”
“No, Sisty by itself—short. Thank you, my dear.”
Four days afterwards, on his return from the book sale, to my father’s inexpressible bewilderment, he was informed that “Pisistratus was growing quite the image of him.”
When at length the good man was made thoroughly aware of the fact, that his son and heir boasted a name so memorable in history as that borne by the enslaver of Athens, and the disputed arranger of Homer—and it was insisted that it was a name he himself had suggested—he was as angry as so mild a man could be. “But it is infamous!” he exclaimed. “Pisistratus christened! Pisistratus! who lived six hundred years before Christ was born. Good heavens, madam! You have made me the father of an anachronism.”
My mother burst into tears. But the evil was irremediable. An anachronism I was, and an anachronism I must continue to the end of the chapter.
CHAPTER IV.
“Of course, sir, you will begin soon to educate your son yourself?” said Mr Squills.
“Of course, sir,” said my father, “you have read Martinus Scriblerus?”