We Lingered On, Looking And Marveling, And Betweenwhiles Wondering Whether Our Automobile's Hacking Cough Had Got Any Better By Resting, Until The Sun Went Down And The Twilight Came.

Following the guidebook's advice we had seen the Colosseum in Rome by moonlight.

There was a full moon on the night we went there. It came heaving up grandly, a great, round-faced, full-cream, curdy moon, rich with rennet and yellow with butter fats; but by the time we had worked our way south to Naples a greedy fortnight had bitten it quite away, until it was reduced to a mere cheese rind of a moon, set up on end against the delft-blue platter of a perfect sky. We waited until it showed its thin rim in the heavens, and then, in the softened half-glow, with the purplish shadows deepening between the brown-gray walls of the dead city, I just naturally turned my imagination loose and let her soar.

Standing there, with the stage set and the light effects just right, in fancy I repopulated Pompeii. I beheld it just as it was on a fair, autumnal morning in 79 A. D. With my eyes half closed, I can see the vision now. At first the crowds are massed and mingled in confusion, but soon figures detach themselves from the rest and reveal themselves as prominent personages. Some of them I know at a glance. Yon tall, imposing man, with the genuine imitation sealskin collar on his toga, who strides along so majestically, whisking his cane against his leg, can be no other than Gum Tragacanth, leading man of the Bon Ton Stock Company, fresh from his metropolitan triumphs in Rome and at this moment the reigning matinee idol of the South.

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