sister, picked up out of a rubbish heap a
little bronze statuette, hardly three inches high, but, as experts said,
of the best artistic period. Such things made our Roman history books
seem like a tale of yesterday, or they transported us back across the
centuries, so that we trod in the footsteps of those who had been but a
moment before us.

In those warm days, after our walks and explorations, Eddy and I, and
little Hubert, who sometimes was permitted to accompany us, though we
deemed him hardly in our class, would greatly solace ourselves with the
clear and gurgling fountains which everywhere in Rome flow forth into
their marble and moss-grown basins with a pleasant sound of coolness and
refreshment. Rome without her fountains would not be Rome; every memory
of her includes them. In the streets, in the piazzas, in the wide
pleasaunces and gardens, the fountains allure us onward, and comfort us
for our weariness. In the Piazza d' Espagna, at the foot of the famous
steps, was that great, boat-shaped fountain whose affluent waters cool
the air which broods over the wide, white stairway; and not far away
is the mighty Trevi, with its turmoil of obstreperous figures swarming
round bragging Neptune, and its cataract of innumerable rills welling
forth and plunging downward by devious ways to meet at last in the great
basin, forever agitated with baby waves lapping against the margins.
These, and many similar elaborate structures, are for the delight of
the eye; but there are scores of modest fountains, at the corners of
the ways, in shady or in sunny places, formed of an ancient sarcophagus
receiving the everlasting tribute of two open-mouthed lion-heads, or
other devices, whose arching outgush splashes into the receptacle made
to hold death, but now immortally dedicated to the refreshment of life.
It was at these minor fountains that we quenched our boyish thirst,
each drinking at the mouth of a spout; and when we discovered that by
stopping up one spout with our thumb the other would discharge with
double force, we played roguish tricks on each other, deluging each
other at unawares with unmanageable gushes of water, till we were forced
to declare a mutual truce of honor. But what delicious draughts did we
suck in from those lion-mouths into our own; never elsewhere did
water seem so sweet and revivifying. And then we would peer into the
transparent depths of the old sarcophagus, with its fringes of green,
silky moss wa