The St. Charles herald. [volume] (Hahnville, La.) 1873-1993, 1883-12-08
would not go back. ''Fortune,'' he

!
/ suffe Gated by a sudden outbusst of
flames and sulphur fumes In that avn
full darkness, when the sudden rush Of
flames was the only light which pierced
the dense smoke, the fields were full of
terrified people, fleeing they knew not
whittier from the land to the sea, and
back from the sea to the land. In the
midst of that fiery rain many imagined
that they saw the shadowy forms of the
Iitans--the Giants of old, whom Jtipia
ter bad chained below Mount Etna-
looming awfully through the smoke,
and thought that they heard the clang
OF trumpets, announcing the end of the
world and the return to chaos.
Thinking of all this, in the warm,
clear sunshine, rs we wander Though
the house --whefe the paintings are yet
bright on the walls, and we may walk
round their gardens, and see their dried
| up fountains-one seems to hear all the
Book of Revelation sounding In ohe's
ears, and Voice spying: "Behold, l
make all things new9
In these deserted streets life suddenly
stopped eighteen hundred years ago. Il
1 is true that the destruction was not ifil
stantaneous, ind great number Of the
inhabitants saved their lives, and even
took away good deal of their treasure.
| But enough was left to show us every
detail of Roman life. The old World is
set before us with all its good and its
evil, its glories and its shame. We know
what manner of men and women they
must have been, and what their daily
! lives were like, almost as well as il we
had actually dwelt among them.
These old Pompeiians were very mod
ern. There is nothing new under the
sun. They had folding doors and hot,
water-urns; they put gratings to their
windows and made foakeries in their
gardens; their steel-yards are exactly
| like those your own cheesemonger uses
to weigh his Cheddafs and Glosters.
Their children had toys like ours bears,
lions, pigs, cats, dogs, made of clay,
and sometimes serving as jugs also.
Poor children! poor mothers! How did
they fare in tho e three days OF darkness
and dismayp
People wrote on walls and cut their
names on seats, just as we do now.
They kept birds in cages. In Naples
to-day, as you walk along the Chiaja,
you may find yourself in the midst OF a
herd of goats, with bells round their
necks, exactly like those in the Museum.
They gave tokens at the doors of their
i places of entertainment-the people
in the gallery had pigeons made of q
sort of tefra-cotta. They put lamps ina
side the hollow eyes of the masks that
adorned their fountains. They even
made grottos Of shells -vulgarity itself
is ancient
They ae sausages, and hung up
strings of Onions. They had stands for
public vehicles, and the schoolmaster
used birch to the ounces, They put
stepping stones across the roads, that
dainty young patrician gentlemen and
the pursy old senators might not soil
their gilded sandals. 1t WIS never cold
tenough for their pipes, to BURST but they
turned their water on hid of with taps;
and their cook-shops had n-.rble conn
5 tiers. They clapped their offeTr~rs into
e the sto ,ks-two gladiators werep,ent
: there e ghteen hundred years! X,
Q When their crockery broke, the
g riyeted it. At Herculaneum there Is
Q huge wine lar half buried in the earth
G II has been badly broken, but Is $
e neatly riveted-with many rivets
! It no doubt held the wine as well q
|, ever. Those rivets have lasted eigl
teen hundred years! 1t is stranSS
d thing to think about. What would u
a housewife have said if some one ha
D. told her that her cracked pot would on
a. last the Roman Empirep
10 The view is very wide from tho
ne Pompeiian streets-I do not mean u
le view seen by the bodily eye-thout
r. Vesuvius' and the plain of Stabia CT
- be seen at every turn-but the view
~ the Kingdoms of this world, and OF t
re dealings of God with them. That III
-. wear OF the Emperor Titus is becol
Ike the year of our Lord 70.
he Thinking of all which has happen
he while Pompeii lay buried, one con
nd upon the Temple of Isis. Its name e
OIL RIGS us back to an antiquity compa.l
1t to which Rome is of yesterday, ISL
The the symbol of the fertile earth,
sty Bride OF the Sun, the Mother OF all
Of ing-was worshipped beside the m
ny. terious Nile long before Joseph '
ay. sold into Egypt, or Abraham W
the down thither This temple was one
pie the buildings which suffered in the g
i'd earthquake of A. D. 63. Nume
noe Popidius rebuilt it in the name OF
ned little son Selsinos, then but six y
igh old, as appears from the inscrlp
out above the temple door, where his nj
and stands recorded among the decuri'
en- in gratitude for this munificence.
be- little Selsinus escape, or are his b.
among the skeletons found in
UNI. House of Diomede?
ster This temple of Isis had money
.npe at the door for the offerings of the Il
. Be full. And in one of the rooms Alta
he to the building there was found
Iinv skeleton of a priest, trying to b
ially through the wall with an AK. Thu
ono it-how he found he was buried
was and seized the AK and hewed ava,
and. dear life, till the sulphurous fumes
the powered him 800 years ago!
g at In the Museum there are some i'm
q oo sions of skeletons One can see.
GOT dying agony so plain that, after eigl
were hundred years, one can not bear tc
and ON them. I ere is poor dog al
came them-he was chained up with
num- some chain and collar. The poor
lIlino Tas choked, and died in convuls
had It is terrible to see even now.
, the But Death came for the most
4 the then, as he comes now-in slower,
..s...1 +lar 1ashion