The Dream (16-18)

When she had shown these things to me, and me to these admiring people, she brought me down again, no longer dressed as I was when I flew away, but seeming to myself to arrive like a grandee born to the purple. She came upon my father himself, who was standing by and waiting for me, showed him my clothes and me, in what state I came, and reminded him, too, of the decision they had come near making about me. These are the things that I remember seeing when hardly more than a boy, I think, and still terrified at the thought of a flogging.

But in the midst of my narrative some one says, "Dear me, how tedious and long-winded his dream is." Or another interrupts with, "This is

No, his narrative had a useful purpose, and so I, too, have related this dream to you to the end that young men may turn to the better part and lay hold of culture, particularly those who are tempted by poverty to play truant and sink to the worse life, to the destruction of what may have been noble natures. I am sure that these will be fortified by hearing my story, and will take me for a sufficient example if they bear in mind. the origin whence I set forth after the higher life, and that my desire was for culture, so that I never lost heart in my old poverty, and, lastly, the guise in which I have come to you, certainly, to say the least of it, not less famous than any of the statuaries.