The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1885-01-14
In Rome.

We arrived in Rome last evening via
the Rock Island road, and an old cattle
friend of mine from North Park, who ia
staying here invited me to como and
visit him during my stay IN the city. lie
is here, he says, to obtain that polish
which he was unable to obtain on the
range. 1T has long been his heart s
dearest wish to go abroad and complete
an already very thorough education.
He was always pretty fairs in arithme-
tic, and could cipher the socks right off
our most prominent men, but he was =
little rusty on Rome, he says.
He has been showing me the town
| and telling me all about it. Rome, he
says, has been the county-seat of this
county for upwards of $500 years, and
still they hayen't t got tirst-class hotel
in the place Romulus filed on Rome
| under the desert land act GOO years be-
fore Christ, and built lunatic asylum
on the Capitoline hill. In those days
everybody was highly educated, and
| every common Dago on the streets
could talk the dead languages like Il
! Normal-school graduate. Greek and
Latin were talked Just as common at a
| prize fight or church sociable in Rome,
among the middle and lower classes, as
| cigar-box Spanish is in southern Colo
/ RADIO to-day.
| Before the Christian era Rome was
ruled by kings who were elected for
| life or during good behavior. This
was done to curtail campaign expenses
| so that the surplus funds could be frit-
| tered away on bread and other Roman
| deicacies. There was also a senate
and 4 college of pontifices and two
! inch augurs who explained the will of
| the gods. These augurs at last became
great bore (Etruscan relic found near
Roman corraD.
For many years there was a squabble
between the patricians and the plebei-
| ans. The patricians were people who
had made a good deal of money, and
| whose blue-blooded daughters showed
their proud and high lineage by eloping
with the family coachman. The plebe-
ians, as a rule, were not checked up so
high, but they generally Q there Eli
/ with both feet, as proud Roman told
me Yesterday as he socked his Roman
nose into a tumbler of Roman punch.
Rome got this term ''plebeian,
learn, from West Point in an early
day
{
on for four hundred years more. Some
times one was on top and sometimes
the other. l could give a long and
glowing resume of the history of hea-
then Rome in my own crude way if
had space, but have not.
The present Rome is built over forty
or fifty feet of debris that is between
two and three thousand years old.
Those who have been in Chicago when
the street gang was engaged in raking
up old personalities and things that
had been accumulated for fifty years,
!. will remember the subtle odor of the
deceased past. excuse me moment
while | 90 and eat little asafetida to
take the taste out of my mouth.) Well
Rome is older, and therefore, it is
worse. / hate to speak about it, but
when they are excavating for a new
. building here and turn up few dis
carded socks of the time of Romulus,
along with otherrelics of aforgotten age
the excavists run and stick their noses
into the bosom of Limburger cheese
. and the people flee to the mountains
J till it is safe to come home again.
This puts kind of damper on build
: ing and real estate is rather dead. A
least 1t is not feeling well. So they
only build a new house every fifty or six
, ty years. Then it takes half century
for the air to get fresh again.
! have been trying for several days tc
| end some Roman candles to take home
with me, but have failed so far.
should feel ashamed of myself to make
this long and expensive trip to Rome
! the very hot-bed of Roman candles, ,anc
J then go home without any.
NV next letter will be from Verons
/ or Cheyenne-I do not know which.
, have got TO hear from Eli Perkins first
We agreed not to write from the same
! place at the same time, for we NIGH
get confused.-BiH Nye, in DenUe,
Opinion.