They have beautiful fountains in Rome. All of a sudden as we went through a narrer street, we see a dazzlin’ sheet of water come down from the rock shell work and statutes, clear streams of water seemed to be gushin’ out on all sides, fallin’ into a big reservoir big enough for a ship to float in, and one day we went to see the Baths of Caracella. Jest think of a bath a mile square, big enough for thirty or forty thousand folks to bathe in at one time. It is all in ruins now, but you can see from the thick walls, tall arches, the sides 369 covered with costly mosaic, what they wuz in their glory. Josiah thought he could make a lovely piece of mosaic from the stuns down in our paster and slate stuns. He said if he could cover the front of the barn with the pictures of his travels in stun, some like the travels of Ulysses, it would be a boon to Jonesville. But good land! it would be a sight to behold made of stuns as big as your hand and all shapes. That ambition must be squenched. Josiah breathed this aspiration to me as we went through the Hall of the Emperors. And they didn’t look no better nor so well as the bretheren in the Jonesville meetin’-house would if they wuz sculped and Josiah said so; though, of course, as I told him, they wuz dressed up more fancy. And he said: “Any decent woman would lend her nightgown for her pardner to be sculped in and handkerchief pins and lace under-sleeves and things.”
Poppea Sabina, the second wife of Mr. Nero, wuz a beautiful-lookin’ woman, though I don’t spoze she wuz what she should be. Her husband kicked her to death some time ago. He ort to been kicked himself; I’d been willin’ to hire the mule myself to done it, I wuz that put out thinkin’ on’t.
Josiah said “Poppy Sabriny wuz the best-lookin’ figger there.”
Arvilly said she most knew he’d been drinkin’, it wuz so fashionable for drinkin’ men to kick their wives, and sez she: “Oh, how I wish I could have canvassed Nero for the ‘Twin Crimes’ before he done it.”
And I sez: “It might have been a good thing for Mr. Nero and for Poppy, but I don’t know how it would have been with you, Arvilly; a man that would kick his wife to death wouldn’t be apt to brook a book-agent.”
“Yes,” sez Josiah, “anybody that would kick Poppy Sabriny would do anything.”
Sez I: “It would look just as well, Josiah, for a perfessor not to talk so much about another woman besides his pardner, even if she is a stun woman.”
“Jealous of a statter!” sez Josiah skornfully.
“Not at all,” sez I. “But Poppea Sabina wuz a pagan, and no better than she should be, and her folks wuzn’t likely and–––”