"'There was a young maid of Sorrento,
Who said to her - '"
I have regretted ever since that at this juncture I came to and
so failed to get the rest of it. I'll bet that was a peach of a
limerick. It started off so promisingly.
Chapter XXIII
Muckraking in Old Pompeii
It now devolves on me as a painful yet necessary duty to topple
from its pedestal one of the most popular idols of legendary lore.
I refer, I regret to say, to the widely famous Roman sentry of
old Pompeii.
Personally I think there has been entirely too much of this sort
of thing going on lately. Muckrakers, prying into the storied
past, have destroyed one after another many of the pet characters
in history. Thanks to their meddlesome activities we know that
Paul Revere did not take any midnight ride. On the night in
question he was laid up in bed with inflammatory rheumatism. What
happened was that he told the news to Mrs. Revere as a secret, and
she in strict confidence imparted it to the lady living next door;
and from that point on the word traveled with the rapidity of
wildfire.
Horatius never held the bridge; he just let the blamed thing go.
The boy did not stand on the burning deck, whence all but him had
fled; he was among the first in the lifeboats.
