The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1874-02-22

practiced than it is among us I; and those VIII
did travel, or who deemed it likely they eve
! should, trusted to that hospitality which ne
nessity had made universal, and the poetry O
daily life had raised by repute into one of tn
greatest virtues. Years before any member O
your family, supposing you to belong to tn
age through which the events of this narrativ
are carrying and to carry rs, years before an,
OF your circle quilted your roof, you knew t.
what house, to what smoky hearth in eacl
foreign land, to what threshold in Spain, Gaul
Syria, Egypt, Greece, the wanderer would
eventually resort. A certain family in sact
OF these and other lands was your hospcs, ant
you were theirs and very often you carried
round your neck, attached to gold or silver
| chain, bit of elder oak notched and
marked by the natural breakage, the CORES
ponding half of which hung day and night
round the neck of some friend living thous-
ands of miles away, beyond rivers, mountains
wild forests, and raging seas. These tokens
were the cheap lodging-money of friendship
Very often they were interchanged and put on
in boyhood, and not presented till advanced
| age. He who had thrown the sacred symbol
round the curly head of his playmate on the
hanks of the Tiber, saw an old man with
scanty white hair approach him, half a CEN
turS afterward, at Alexandria, or Nunantia,
| or Athens, and offer him little bit of wood,
| the fractures of which were found to fit into
| those of a similar piece worn upon his own
bosom. Or the son brought the fathers
token or q son received what a father had
given. And the stranger was forthwith Joy
! fully made welcome, and took rank among
dear friends. Forthwith the bath and the
| supper introduced him to his remote home
| amid foreign faces. To be once unfaithful to
| these pledges, was to become irreparably
Infamous. The catif who thus sundered the
ties of Evolutionary and necessity caused and
worldwide kindness, became an object of
scorn and reprobation to all.
1t was enough to mention of him " that man
has hoh0n his token word Of hospitality :" with
that all was said. Traces of this touching
custom appear to survive in some of the cere-
monials of rustic love, amid many a popula
ton ignorant that the ancient Romans ever
regned over Europe.
But if inns, in year eleven, were not what
they have boon in medi;pval and modern Eu.
rope, nevertheless few existed even then and
a more notable establishment of this kind
never 1ourished in any part of the Roman
empire than that to which our story has now
brought us. 1t was the exception to manners
then prevalent, and the pressage of manners
to come long afterward. 1t used to be COM
monty called the Post-House of the Hundredh
Milestone, or, more briefly, Crispus's Inn.
The public room of this place of entertain
ment was not unlike the coffee-room of a good
modern inn, except that it was necessarily far
more full of incident and interest, because the
ancients were beyond comparison more adj
dicted to living in public than any modern
nations have ever been.
An Englishman who makes a similar remark
of the French, in comparison with his own
countrymen, has only to remember that The
modern French as much excel the ancient Ro-
mans in fondness for retirement and privacy
and domestic life, as the English believe them
selves to excel the French in the same particp-
lar.
In Crispus's public ROOM, for instance, there
was one and only one table arranged with
couches around it, upon which some three or
feur customers, while eating and drinking.
could recline according to the fashion adopted
in the private houses of the rich and noble. |
All the other tables stood round-about the
walls OF the apartment, with benches and set
tees on each slde offering seats for the guests |
Ao ihhcA oSalS aJ lneSe TABLES were generally |
for two reasons the occupants saw |
all that passed in the room, and besides. had
the wall, against which they could lean back. !
When Velleius Paterculus, having left Tibe- |
RUS and Sejanus in the meadows near the |
Liris, took charge of the prptorian souadrons
and of Paulus, he directed "a Batayian trooper
to Gismount and give his horse to the prisoner.
Faulus willingly sprang upon the big Flemish
beast, and rode by the side of the oblieing Off
Ger who had given him that conveyance. Thus
they proceeded at an easy amblo until thew
reached the post-house, to the porch of which
the noise OF four thousand hoofs, suddenly ap-
preaching along the paved roa9, had brought
q group of curious gazers. Among these was
the landlord, Crispus hmself
halt, as the reader must have inferred
from former incident, was occasioned at the
door by the intimation conveyed to Paterculus
that Paulus's sister had tainted, that she and
her mother intended to seek a lodging at the
inn, and that the mother and brother of the
invalid would both feel grateful to the COM
handing officer if he could permit Paulus.
upon pledging his word not to make any at.