"Pompeii lay buried for seventeen centuries, and people forgot that there had been such a city; when, after a long time, a farmer who was digging for a well discovered the ruins, and since then a part of each city has been excavated."
"I should like to know just how the people of Pompeii lived, and what they were doing when the city was destroyed," said Edith.
"You shall see the relics that were taken from the ruins and are now in the museum at Naples," her mother told her. "The life of the old Pompeiians has been studied from those relics and a guide can tell you just how they did their housekeeping and what their life was like."
Before she left America, Edith had looked forward to the smoking mountain of Vesuvius and the city of Pompeii as being the most wonderful part of her journey. The volcano, and the city which lay buried under ashes for centuries, had been the goal of her desires.
"The army of boys bearing baskets of earth from the excavations at Pompeii"
"Wait until we see Vesuvius and Pompeii!" had been her cry whenever she wrote home. "Then I shall have something to tell you!"
But she turned her face away from the forbidding crater and the desolate beds of lava with a feeling of disappointment that was half fear.
"Perhaps I shall like better to go into the museum and see the curious things that were found in Pompeii," she said, as she searched for a bit of lava from which to have a piece of jewelry fashioned.