wonnered at it, wonnered who Celia Matella wuz, how she
looked, how old she wuz, if she had any little boys and girls. He jest
wonnered and nothin' else, and in the end I did, too.

You have no idee till you see how big the Colosseum is. It is as long
as from our house to she that wuz Submit Tewksberry's, and so on round
by Solomon Gowdey's back agin. You may not believe it, but it is true,
and I d'no but it is bigger. It used to accommodate one hundred
thousand people in its palmy days, or so I spoze they called it, when
some time durin' one season five thousand beasts would be killed there
fightin' with human bein's, hull armies of captives bein' torn to
pieces there for the delight of them old pagans. Fathers bein' made to
kill their wives and children right there for their delight.

Oh, how I wished, as I told Arvilly, I could git holt of Mr. Titus and
Mr. Nero and some of the rest of them leadin' men.

The conqueror, Mr. Titus, brought back twelve thousand of the
conquered Jews and made 'em work and toil to build up that lofty arch
in memory of their own defeat and captivity and his glory. You'd think
that wuz enough trouble for 'em, but I've hearn, and it come pretty
straight to me, that he misused 'em more or less while they wuz
workin' away at it.

'Tennyrate, they say a Jew won't go under that arch to this day and
they've been seen to spit at it, and I spoze they throw things at it
more or less on the sly.

Sez I, "I'd gin 'em a piece of my mind if I knowed they would make me
fight with a elephant the next minute."

Arvilly thought that if she could sold them the "Twin Crimes" it might
have helped 'em to do better, but I d'no as it would. But that great
amphitheatre where the blood and agony of the martyrs cried to
heaven, was afterwards dedicated to these Christian martyrs. There are
eighty arches of entrance. Only a part of the immense circular wall is
now standing, but you can see what it wuz. There are four stories of
arches, one hundred and fifty-seven feet high in all, the arena it
encloses is two hundred and eighty-seven feet long.

Dorothy and Robert Strong and Miss Meechim went and see it by
moonlight, and they say that it wuz a more beautiful sight than words
can describe. But I bein' a little afraid of the rumatiz, thought that
I had better go by broad daylight, and Josiah did, too. I mistrusted
that Robert and Dorothy beheld it by a sweeter and softer light than
even the Italian moonlight, b