cient days to hold cups and glasses.
In the outer edge of the sidewalk before the shop are two round holes
cut into the stone. Long ago poles were thrust into them to hold an
awning that shaded the walk in front of the counters. We can imagine men
stopping in this pleasant shade as they passed. The busy slave inside
the shop whips out a cup and a graceful, long-handled ladle and dips out
the sweet-smelling wine from the wide-mouthed jar. And we can imagine
how the cups fell clattering from the men's hands when Vesuvius
thundered. In one shop, indeed, the excavators found an overturned cup
on the counter and a wine stain on the marble. But the most interesting
shops are the bakeries. There were twenty of them in Pompeii. You will
see the ovens in the courtyard. They are big beehives built of stone or
brick. The baker made a fire inside and let the walls become hot. Then
he raked out the coals and cleaned the floor and put in his bread. The
hot walls baked the loaves. In one oven the excavators found a burned
loaf eighteen hundred years old. When the earthquake shook his house,
did the baker snatch out the rest of the ovenful to feed his hungry
family as they groped about for safety in the terrible darkness?
In several bakeries you will see, also, the mills. They are great
mortar-shaped things standing taller than a man. The heavy stone above
turned around upon the stone below. A man poured wheat in at the top. It
fell down and was ground between the two stones and dropped out at the
bottom as flour. A horse or donkey was hitched to the mill to turn it.
Around and around he walked all day. He was blindfolded to prevent his
becoming dizzy. You will see on the stone floor in one bakery the path
that was made by years of this walking. In the old days this silent
empty court must have been an interesting place. The donkey's hoofs beat
lazy time on the stone floor. Now and then a slave lifted up a bag of
wheat and poured it into the mill or scooped out the white flour from
the trough at the bottom. Another man sifted the flour and the breeze
blew the white dust over his bare arms. Some of the ovens were smoking
and glowing with fresh fire. Others were shut, with the browning bread
inside, and a good smell hung in the air. And out in front was a little
shop where the master sold the thin loaves and the fancy little cakes.

In the hundreds of houses and shops of this little town the excavators
have found bronze tables and lamps a