The Innocents Abroad


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when he turned away with a yawn at last and said,  
"
He a star! handles his sword like an apprentice brigand! he'll do for  
the country, may be, but he don't answer for the metropolis!"  
Glad was the contraband that had a seat in the pit at the Saturday  
matinee, and happy the Roman street-boy who ate his peanuts and guyed  
the  
gladiators from the dizzy gallery.  
For me was reserved the high honor of discovering among the rubbish of  
the ruined Coliseum the only playbill of that establishment now extant.  
There was a suggestive smell of mint-drops about it still, a corner of it  
had evidently been chewed, and on the margin, in choice Latin, these  
words were written in a delicate female hand:  
"
Meet me on the Tarpeian Rock tomorrow evening, dear, at sharp  
seven. Mother will be absent on a visit to her friends in the  
Sabine Hills. CLAUDIA."  
Ah, where is that lucky youth to-day, and where the little hand that  
wrote those dainty lines? Dust and ashes these seventeen hundred years!  
Thus reads the bill:  
313  


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311 312 313 314 315

Quick Jump
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