No More Learning

AGORACRITUS. I have freshened Demos up somewhat on the stove and have
turned his ugliness into beauty.

CHORUS. I admire your inventive genius; but, where is he?

AGORACRITUS. He is living in ancient Athens, the city of the garlands of
violets.

CHORUS. How I should like to see him! What is his dress like, what his
manner?

AGORACRITUS. He has once more become as he was in the days when he lived
with Aristides and Miltiades. But you will judge for yourselves, for I
hear the vestibule doors opening. Hail with your shouts of gladness the
Athens of old, which now doth reappear to your gaze, admirable, worthy of
the songs of the poets and the home of the illustrious Demos.

CHORUS. Oh!
noble, brilliant Athens, whose brow is wreathed with violets,
show us the sovereign master of this land and of all Greece.

AGORACRITUS. Lo! here he is coming with his hair held in place with a
golden band and in all the glory of his old-world dress; perfumed with
myrrh, he spreads around him not the odour of lawsuits, but of peace.

CHORUS. Hail! King of Greece, we congratulate you upon the happiness you
enjoy; it is worthy of this city, worthy of the glory of Marathon.

DEMOS. Come, Agoracritus, come, my best friend; see the service you have
done me by freshening me up on your stove.

AGORACRITUS. Ah! if you but remembered what you were formerly and what
you did, you would for a certainty believe me to be a god.

DEMOS. But what did I? and how was I then?

AGORACRITUS.