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Page 69
Momma looked at her husband's Aunt Caroline with indignant scorn. "Do
you really think so?" she asked, but we could all see that her words
were a very inadequate expression for her emotions. Mrs. Portheris drew
all the guns of her orthodoxy into line for battle. "I am surprised----"
she began, and then the Senator politely but firmly interfered.
"Ladies," he said, "'_De mortuis nisi bonum_,' which is to say it isn't
customary to slang corpses, especially, as you may say, in their
presence. I guess we can all be thankful, anyhow, that heathen nowadays
have got a cooler earth to live on," and that for the moment was the end
of it, but momma still gazed commiseratingly at the figures, with a
suspicious tendency to look for her handkerchief.
"It's too terrible," she said. "We can actually see their _features_."
"Don't let them get on your nerves, Augusta," suggested poppa.
"I won't if I can help it. But when you see their clothes and their hair
and realise----"
"It happened over eighteen hundred years ago, my dear, and most of them
got away."
"That didn't make it any better for those who are now before us," and
momma used her handkerchief threateningly, though it was only in
connection with her nose.
"Well now, Augusta, I hate to destroy an illusion like that, because
they're not to be bought with money, but since you're determined to work
yourself up over these unfortunates, I've got to expose them to you.
They're not the genuine remains you take them for. They're mere
worthless imitations."
"Alexander," said momma suspiciously, "you never hesitate to tamper with
the truth if you think it will make me any more comfortable. I don't
believe you."
"All right," returned the Senator; "when we get home you ask Bramley. It
was Bramley that put me on to it. Whenever one of those Pompeii fellows
dropped, the ashes kind of caked over him, and in the course of time
there was a hole where he had been. See? And what you're looking at is
just a collection of those holes filled up with composition and then dug
out. Mere holes!"
"The illusion is dreadfully perfect," sighed momma. "Fancy dying like a
baked potato in hot ashes! Somehow, Alexander, I don't seem able to get
over it," and momma gazed with distressed fascination at the grim form
of the negro porter.
"We've got no proper grounds for coming to that conclusion either,"
replied poppa firmly. "Just as likely they were suffocated by the gas
that came up out of the ground."
"Oh, if I could think that!" momma exclaimed with relief. "But if I find
you've been deceiving me, Alexander, I'll never forgive you. It's _too_
solemn!"
"You ask Bramley," I heard the Senator reply. "And now come and tell me
if this loaf of bread somebody baked eighteen hundred and twenty
something years ago isn't exactly the same shape as the Naples bakers
are selling right now."
"Daughter," said momma as she went, "I hope you are taking copious
notes. This is the wonder of wonders that we behold to-day." I said I
was, and I wandered over to where Mrs. Portheris examined with Mr.
Mafferton an egg that was laid on the last day of Pompeii. Mrs.
Portheris was asking Mr. Mafferton, in her most impressive manner, if it
was not too wonderful to have positive proof that fowls laid eggs then
just as they do now; and I made a note of that too. Dicky and Isabel
bemoaned the fate of the immortal dog who still bites his flank in the
pain extinguished so long ago. I hardly liked to disturb them, but I
heard Dicky say as I passed that he didn't mind much about the humans,
they had their chance, but this poor little old tyke was tied up, and
that on the part of Providence was playing it low down.
Then we all stepped out into the empty streets of Pompeii and Mr.
Mafferton read to us impressively, from Murray, the younger Pliny's
letter to Tacitus describing its great disaster. The Senator listened
thoughtfully, for Pliny goes into all kinds of interesting details. "I
haven't much acquaintance with the classics," said he, as Mr. Mafferton
finished, "but it strikes me that the modern New York newspaper was the
medium to do that man justice. It's the most remarkable case I've
noticed of a good reporter _born before his time_."
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