Coming away from
there I had an argument with a fellow American.
He said that if
we had these Catacombs in America we should undoubtedly enlarge
them and put in band stands and lunch places, and altogether make
them more attractive for picnic parties and Sunday excursionists.
I contended, on the other hand, that if they were in America the
authorities would close them up and protect the moldered bones of
those early Christians from the vulgar gaze and prying fingers of
every impious relic hunter who might come along. The dispute rose
higher and grew warmer until I offered to bet him fifty dollars
that I was right and he was wrong. He took me up promptly - he had
sporting instincts; I'll say that for him - and we shook hands on
it then and there to bind the wager. I expect to win that bet.
We had turned off the Appian Way and were crossing a corner of that
unutterably hideous stretch of tortured and distorted waste known
as the Campagna, which goes tumbling away to the blue Alban Mountains,
when we came on the scene of an accident. A two-wheeled mule cart,
proceeding along a crossroad, with the driver asleep in his canopied
seat, had been hit by a speeding automobile and knocked galley-west.
The automobile had sped on - so we were excitedly informed by some
other tourists who had witnessed the collision - leaving the wreckage
bottom side up in the ditch.
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