nd so we hired a hack and went to the buried town,
but dad insisted on carrying an umbrella, so if Vesuvius belched any
more ashes he could protect himself. Gee, but from what I have seen at
that old ruin, a man would need an umbrella made of corrugated iron to
keep from being buried.

[Illustration: Dad insisted on carrying an umbrella 207]

Well, when we got to Pompeii dad was for going right where they were
digging, but I got him to look over the streets and houses that had
been uncovered first, and he was paralyzed to think that a town could be
covered with ashes all these thousands of years, and then be uncovered
and find a town that would compare, in many respects, with cities of the
present day, with residences complete with sculpture, paintings and cut
marble that would skin Chicago to a finish.

We went through residences that looked as rich as the Vanderbilt houses
in New York, baths that you could take a plunge and a swim in, if they
had the water, paintings that would take a premium at any horse show
to-day, pavements that would shame the pavements of London and Paris,
and petrified women that you couldn't tell from a low-necked party in
Washington, except that the ashes had eaten the clothes off. I guess
most of the people in Pompeii got away when the ashes began to rain
down, for they must have seen that it wasn't going to be a light shower,
but a deluge, 'cause they never have found many corpses. They must have
run to Naples, and maybe they are running yet, and you may see some
of them at your grocery, and if you do see anybody covered with ashes,
looking for a job, give them some crackers and cheese and charge it to
dad, for they must be hungry by this time.

Say, do you know that some of those refugees from Pompeii went off in
such a hurry that they left bread baking in the ovens, and meat cooking
in the pots? It seems the most wonderful thing to me of anything I ever
saw. We went all through the streets and houses and saw ballrooms
that beat anything in San Francisco, and when we went into a building
occupied by the officers in charge of the excavations, and dad saw a
telephone and an electric light, he thought those things had been dug
up, too, and he claimed that the men who were receiving millions of
dollars in royalties on telephones and electric lights were frauds who
were infringing on Pompeii patents 2,000 years old, and he wouldn't
believe me when I told him that telephones and electric ligh