The one was long and thin, with
melancholy features, while the other was fat and sleek, with a
loud voice and the air of a man who is not to be gainsaid.
"Come hither, good youth," he cried, "come hither! _Vultus
ingenui puer_. Heed not the face of my good coz here. _Foenum
habet in cornu_, as Don Horace has it; but I warrant him harmless
for all that."
"Stint your bull's bellowing!" exclaimed the other. "If it come
to Horace, I have a line in my mind: _Loquaces si sapiat_----How
doth it run? The English o't being that a man of sense should
ever avoid a great talker. That being so, if all were men of
sense then thou wouldst be a lonesome man, coz."
"Alas! Dicon, I fear that your logic is as bad as your
philosophy or your divinity--and God wot it would be hard to say
a worse word than that for it. For, hark ye: granting, _propter
argumentum_, that I am a talker, then the true reasoning runs that
since all men of sense should avoid me, and thou hast not avoided
me, but art at the present moment eating herrings with me under a
holly-bush, ergo you are no man of sense, which is exactly what I
have been dinning into your long ears ever since I first clapped
eyes on your sunken chops.
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