"When I walked up the street of Tombs, where you get the best view of Vesuvius, I could not help thinking that in spite of its calm appearance the mountain is a very dangerous neighbor, and I am rather glad that we have decided not to make the ascent.
"Afterwards when I stood on a small hill, it was hard to believe that under the green slopes in front of us there lay perhaps as large a part of Pompeii as they have yet uncovered. Who knows what wonderful things may yet be found, though it may take more than fifty years to finish the work? It was up here that I dared pick a few tiny buttercups, that I send you as a souvenir of Pompeii.
POMPEII.
"The town has a bricky look as you see it from the hill, that's one reason, I suppose, why it seems so modern. After all, the greater part of the inhabitants of Pompeii escaped alive. They fled at the first warning. When the eruption stopped for a while, many went back for their valuables, or because they thought it was all over, and there were some old and sick who, perhaps, couldn't be moved at first. All these two thousand were caught in the second fearful eruption. Casts of some of the bodies are in the little museum on the grounds, but I hardly looked at them, and, in fact, we spent very little time there because we had seen the same kind of things at Naples. This is a fearfully long letter, but I hope I shall find a longer one from you at Rome, where we go from Naples by the morning express to-morrow."