Thither Philammon rowed the old man over, week by week, in a light canoe of papyrus, and fished, as he sat waiting for him, for the common meal.

A simple, happy, gentle life was that of the Laura, all portioned out by rules and methods, which were held hardly less sacred than those of the Scriptures, on which they were supposed (and not so wrongly either) to have been framed.

Each man had food and raiment, shelter on earth, friends and counsellors, living trust in the continual care of Almighty God; and, blazing before his eyes, by day and night, the hope of everlasting glory beyond all poets' dreams....

And what more would man have had in those days?
Thither they had fled out of cities, compared with which Paris is earnest and Gomorrha chaste,--out of a rotten, infernal, dying world of tyrants and slaves, hypocrites and wantons,--to ponder undisturbed on duty and on judgment, on death and eternity, heaven and hell; to find a common creed, a common interest, a common hope, common duties, pleasures, and sorrows....

True, they had many of them fled from the post where God had placed them, when they fled from man into the Thebaid waste....