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purposes. You can find out who lived in many a house in Pompeii by the
carved stone door-plates affixed to them: and in the same way you can
tell who they were that occupy the tombs. Every where around are things
that reveal to you something of the customs and history of this forgotten
people. But what would a volcano leave of an American city, if it once
rained its cinders on it? Hardly a sign or a symbol to tell its story.
In one of these long Pompeiian halls the skeleton of a man was found,
with ten pieces of gold in one hand and a large key in the other. He had
seized his money and started toward the door, but the fiery tempest
caught him at the very threshold, and he sank down and died. One more
minute of precious time would have saved him. I saw the skeletons of a
man, a woman, and two young girls. The woman had her hands spread
wide
apart, as if in mortal terror, and I imagined I could still trace upon
her shapeless face something of the expression of wild despair that
distorted it when the heavens rained fire in these streets, so many ages
ago. The girls and the man lay with their faces upon their arms, as if
they had tried to shield them from the enveloping cinders. In one
apartment eighteen skeletons were found, all in sitting postures, and
blackened places on the walls still mark their shapes and show their
attitudes, like shadows. One of them, a woman, still wore upon her
skeleton throat a necklace, with her name engraved upon it--JULIE DI
DIOMEDE.
But perhaps the most poetical thing Pompeii has yielded to modern
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