The birds all gone their several ways at last, I got up from
my stone and wondered if the
Old Romans ever dreamed that this
wall which they made to endure would after seventeen hundred
years have no more important use than this - to afford shelter
to a few little birds and to the solitary man that watched
them - from the bleak wind. Many a strange Roman curse on this
ungenial climate must these same stones have heard.
Looking through a gap in the wall I saw, close by, on the
other side, a dozen men at work with pick and shovel throwing
up huge piles of earth. They were uncovering a small portion
of that ancient buried city and were finding the foundations
and floors and hypocausts of Silchester's public baths; also
some broken pottery and trifling ornaments of bronze and bone.
The workmen in that bitter wind were decidedly better off than
the gentlemen from Burlington House in charge of the
excavations. These stood with coats buttoned up and hands
thrust deep down in their pockets. It seemed to me that
it was better to sit in the shelter of the wall and watch the
birds than to burrow in the crumbling dust for that small
harvest. Yet I could understand and even appreciate their
work, although it is probable that the glow I experienced was
in part reflected. Perhaps my mental attitude, when standing
in that sheltered place, and when getting on to the windy wall
I looked down on the workers and their work, was merely
benevolent.
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