“Did you shed tears, Josiah?” sez I.
But he waved the question off and continued, “The guide told me that folks usually wep’ some there, and I expected you all would, you are all so romantik and took up with the widder Montague and her pardner. I took the lead, but none of you follered on.”
“Well,” sez I, “if you felt like weepin’, Josiah, I wouldn’t want to break it up, but to me it looked fur more like a waterin’ trough than it did like a tomb.”
“Well, you know how it is in the older part of the Jonesville buryin’-ground, the stuns are all tipped over and broke. Mr. and Miss Capulet have been dead for some time and probable the grave stuns have gone down.”
Well, being kinder rousted up on the subject, I quoted considerable poetry about Romeo and Juliet, and Josiah bein’ 330 kinder huffy and naterally hatin’ poetry, and real hungry, too, scorfed at and made light on me. He kep’ it up till I sez:
“William Shakespeare said there wuz Two Gentlemen of Verona, and I should be glad, Josiah Allen, to think you made the third one; but a true gentleman wouldn’t make light of his pardner or slight her reminiscences.”
Sez he: “Reminescin’ on a empty stomach is deprestin’, and don’t set well.”
Well, it had been some time sence we had eat, and Tommy wuz gittin’ hungry, too, so we returned to the tarven.
In the afternoon we went to see the old Roman amphitheatre. It wuz probably built not fur from A.D. Jest think on’t! Most two thousand years old, and in pretty good shape yet! It is marble, and could accommodate twenty thousand people. All round and under it is a arch, where I spoze the poor condemned prisoners wuz kep’ and the wild beasts that wuz to fight with ’em and kill ’em for the pleasure of the populace. Miss Meechim got dretful worked up seein’ it, and she and Arvilly had words, comparin’ old times and new, and the different wild beasts they encourage and let loose on the public. Arvilly’s views, tinged and shadowed as they always are, by what she’s went through, they both got mad as hens before they got through.
There are ruins of a large aqueduct near, which wuz flooded with water, I spoze, for acquatic sports way back, mebby back to Anna D, or before her. Some say that early Christians were put to death in this amphitheatre, but it hain’t very clearly proved.