I Had Always Admired That Soldier - Not His Judgment, Which Was Faulty, But His Heroism, Which Was Immense.

To myself I used to say:

"That unknown common soldier, nameless though he was, deserves to live forever in the memory of mankind. He lacked imagination, it is true, but he was game. It was a glorious death to die - painful, yet splendid. Those four poor wretches whose shells were found in the prison under the gladiators' school, with their ankles fast in the iron stocks - I know why they stayed. Their feet were too large for their own good. But no bonds except his dauntless will bound him at the portals of the doomed city. Duty was the only chain that held him.

"And to think that centuries and centuries afterward they should find his monument - a vacant, empty mold in the piled-up pumice! Had I been in his place I should have created my vacancy much sooner - say, about thirty seconds after the first alarm went in. But he was one who chose rather that men should say, 'How natural he looks!' than 'Yonder he goes!' And he has my sincere admiration. When I go to Pompeii - if ever I do go there - I shall seek out the spot where he made the supremest sacrifice to authority that ever any man could make, and I shall tarry a while in those hallowed precincts!"

That was what I said I would do and that was what I did do that afternoon at Pompeii.

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