' housework, and everything right from the street, and though I
don't spoze the poor suffer so much here on account of the warm
climate, yet dirt and rags and filth and vermin didn't look any better
to me here than they did in Jonesville.

In Naples as a rule the lower parts of the houses are shops,
restaurants, etc., and the upper stories are used for dwellings. The
beautiful terraces of the city and the flat roofs of the houses are
covered with shrubs and flowers, and filled with gayly dressed
promenaders, givin' it a gay appearance. And you don't see in the
faces of the crowd any expression of fear for the danger signal that
smokes up in the sky, no more than our faces to home show signs of our
realizin' the big danger signals on our own horizon.

I d'no as I ever had hearn of the third city that wuz destroyed when
Herculaneam and Pompeii wuz. But Vesuvius did put an end to another
city called Stabea at that time, most two thousand years ago, but that
is some years back and I d'no as it is strange that the news hadn't
got to Jonesville yet.

Naples has three hundred meetin'-houses, enough you would say to make
the citizens do as they ort to. But I don't spoze they do. I hearn,
and it come quite straight, too, that it is a dretful city for folks
to act and behave, though it used us real well.

It has a good many theatres and has a large museum where I would be
glad to spent more time than I did. Dretful interestin' to me wuz the
rich frescoes and marbles dug up in the buried cities. Just to think
on't how long they stayed down there under the ground, and now come
out lookin' as well as ever whilst the Love or the Ambition that
carved the exquisite lines have gone away so fur that we can't foller
'em; way into some other planet, mebby. Bronze statutes, the finest
collection in the world they say, and all sorts of weapons, Etruscian
vases, coins, tablets, marbles, ornaments of all kinds enough to make
your head feel dizzy to glance at 'em.

Some of the statutes I didn't want Josiah to see; they wuzn't dressed
decent to appear in company, but then agin I knew he wuz a perfessor
and had always read about the Garden of Eden and Eve when she and Adam
first took the place and wuz so scanty on't for clothes, but I didn't
like their looks. Miss Meechim thought they wuz genteel and called it
high art, and Josiah, for a wonder, agreed with her; they hardly ever
think alike.

But I sez, "Josiah Allen, while I am a livin' w