arries around in leash, as other women
carry pugs and poodles, came near giving me meningitis in my tender
years. My first governess, a Puritan spinster, full of zeal, and
conscientiously bent on earning her wages, by exercising my brains to
their utmost capacity, undertook to introduce me to all the highly
immoral personages and practices that made the Punic Wars famous. By
way of making Imilco a lifelong acquaintance, she illustrated the siege
of Agrigentum by a huge, hideous image of Phalaris' 'Brazen Bull,'
drawn with chalk on the school-room blackboard.

"A wonderful beast it certainly was; that taurus with head lowered,
tail lashing the air, one hoof pawing savagely, worthy representative
of all the horrors it typified, and which she explained with maddening
perspicuity. That night, when papa tore himself away from the club room
at one o'clock, and met mamma on the doorstep--just coming home from a
supper at Delmonico's after an opera party--they were ascending the
stairs, when frantic cries drove from her ears the echoes of
'Traviata's' witching strain. Thinking only a conflagration would
justify the din, papa threw up the hall sash and shouted 'fire!' and
the police sounded the alarm, and all pandemonium broke loose.
Investigation discovered me, wriggled half way down to the foot of my
bed, buried under the blankets, and shrieking 'Perillus' Bull! I am
roasting in the Brass Bull!' Being not very ardent disciples of Clio,
my solicitous parents failed to understand the nightmare; hence cracked
ice was folded over my head (mid-winter), and the family physician
ordered a mustard plaster half a yard long, down my spine. I vividly
remember Imilco, and the bovine fury pawing the blackboard; but of the
three Punic Wars, then and there tabooed, I recall only the brass
monster at Agrigentum. Leo, when we reach Girgenti, the remaining Mecca
of your historic hopes, some time to-morrow, you will understand why,
instead of climbing to the temples of the cliff, I shall lock the door
of our cabin, and drown the bellowing of the beast in Daudet's new
book."

"I wish, indeed I do, that you had staid there to-day, instead of
coming ashore to dampen all our ardor and enthusiasm by your constant
thin drizzle of scorn. One should suppose that in this idyllic region,
some ray of poetic warmth must melt your frigid, scoffing soul. Daudet
suits my sister far better than Theocritus," answered her brother,
fastening a sprig of orange bl