Friends seeking each
other with faces of utter despair; the groans of the dying mingled
with the crash of falling buildings; the pelting of the fiery stones;
the shrieks of women and children; the terrific peals of thunder.

So ended the day, and the dreadful scene went on far into the night.
In a few hours the silence of death fell upon the city. The ashes
continued to pour steadily down upon it, and drifting into every
crevice of the buildings, and settling like a closely-fitting shroud
around the thousands and thousands of dead bodies, preserved all that
the flames had spared for the eyes of the curious who should live
centuries after. And a gray ashy hill blotted out Pompeii from the
sight of that generation.

Hundreds of skeletons have already been found, and their expressive
attitudes tell us the story of their death. We know of the pitiful
avarice and vanity of many of the rich ladies who went to their homes
to save their jewels, and fell with them clutched tightly in their
hands. One woman in the house of the Faun was loaded with jewels, and
had died in the vain effort to hold up with her outstretched arms the
ceiling that was crushing down upon her. But women were not the only
ones who showed an avaricious disposition in the midst of the thunders
and flames of Vesuvius. Men had tried to carry off their money, and
the delay had cost them their lives, and they were buried in the ashes
with the coins they so highly valued. Diomed, one of the richest men
of Pompeii, abandoned his wife and daughters and was fleeing with a
bag of silver when he was stifled in front of his garden by noxious
vapors. In the cellar of his house were found the corpses of seventeen
women and children.

A priest was discovered in the temple of Isis, holding fast to an axe
with which he had cut his way through two walls, and died at the
third. In a shop two lovers had died in each other's arms. A woman
carrying a baby had sought refuge in a tomb, but the ashes had walled
them tightly in. A soldier died bravely at his post, erect before a
city gate, one hand on his spear and the other on his mouth, as if to
keep from breathing the stifling gases.

Thus perished in a short time over thirty thousand citizens and
strangers in the city of Pompeii, now a city under the ground.

THE COACHMAN.

[Illustration]

When a boy sees a coachman driving two showy, high-stepping horses
along the street, or, better still, over a level country