“Jest like a woman!” sez Josiah, “a man can’t praise up another female, dead or alive, without his pardner picking flaws in ’em.”
Well, I drawed his attention off onto the Cæsars, Augustus and Domitian, and quite a few on ’em. Nero’s bust I despised lookin’ at––brutal tyrant––as Josiah truly said anybody that would kill his wife and grandmother would do anything and wuz too mean to be looked at. If I could covered up his face I’d been willin’ to used my best crape veil that I mourned for Mother Allen in. Nero’s grandma, she that wuz Agrepina Agrippa, wuz good featured but broken-hearted lookin’. No wonder, havin’ such a grandson in the family. Arvilly said as she looked at it, that she believed if old Miss Nero, his grandma, and his own ma had spanked him good and sound and sot him down hard in the corner from day to day he wouldn’t acted and behaved so when he got bigger. She said she presoomed he wuz allowed to pierce flies with a pin and torter hornets and May bugs and rob birds’ nests and tie cans to dogs’ tails and act, and he got worse as he got bigger. And I d’no but she wuz right. I’ve seen the Nero sperit in small boys many times; why, I see it in Thomas Jefferson when he wuz little, but it wus squenched and he’s come up noble.
Miss Meechim wanted to see the Paletine Hill, the spot where Romulus and Remus wuz nursed by a she wolf; Josiah don’t believe it. He said no wolf would consent to bring up twins by hand, and no ma would ever allow it, but that’s what they say. Miss Meechim explained here how when the twins had growed up Romulus harnessed a heifer and bull to a plough and laid out the site of the city. Robert Strong wuz full of memories of Cicero, Catalus, the Gracchi, and so wuz Dorothy. But no place interested me there so 371 much as the Forum, where some think Paul wuz tried. He wuz tried before Nero, and there wuz Nero’s judgment place, and there wuz the seat for prisoners. As I looked round me I could imagine the incomparable eloquence of Paul that sways the human heart as leaves are waved by a strong breeze, and his memory sweetened the hull place, and it needed it bad enough, yes indeed it did. But to resoom:
One day Arvilly and I wuz takin’ a walk together, Josiah and Tommy bein’ a little ahead, when we see a elegant carriage comin’ along, a rich red color all ornamented with gold, with six horses, their gorgeous harnesses nice enough for bridal ornaments. And there wuz outriders goin’ ahead and men in brilliant uniform fallin’ in behind, and lots and lots of carriages follerin’ on in the procession. There wuz a axident in front, two carriages goin’ in opposite directions had smashed in together, and two or three fallin’ over them wuz the cause. I see that in that splendid carriage right under my nose as it were, a gentleman sittin’ alone, dressed up in a way that would have shed delight into the soul of Josiah Allen, and a female bystander sez, “There is the pope.”
He had a bright red robe on, all covered with crosses and stars and orders, and a high peaked cap of the same color. And even as I looked at him I thought what a beautiful stripe them clothes would make in a rag carpet after he’d got through with ’em.
You could see he wuz good natered and smart and about as old as Salathiel Henzy and looked like him. His benign face wuz lookin’ over the crowd as if he had a look into a better country. I liked his linement first-rate and believe he is a likely man, and I felt that it would encourage him to hear me say so, and also I felt that there wuz some things that I wanted to advise him for his good. So I advanced to the side of the carriage door and sez, holdin’ out my hand in a cordial way:
“Good mornin’, Mr. Pope; I am glad to see you lookin’ so well.”
Bein’ took so completely by surprise, he held out his hand. They have told me since that he meant to have me kiss it, but I never thought on’t nor shouldn’t done it if I had, not bein’ in the habit of kissin’ strange men’s hands; no, I grasped holt of it and shook it warmly just as I would Salathiel’s.
He riz his hand up in benediction and said some words that I couldn’t understand, but good ones I know from his looks, and I bent my head as reverent as I would before Elder Minkley. But as I lifted my eyes what wuz my horrow to see Arvilly advance takin’ out “The Twin Crimes” from her work-bag and before I could interfere she had begun to canvass him. Sez she: “Mr. Pope, I have a book here I would like to call your attention to: ‘The Twin Crimes of America: Intemperance and Greed.’” Good creeter, it wuz too bad. But it ended triumphant for Arvilly, for whether it wuz my noble words to him that had softened him down or whether it wuz that he knowed how rampant these two evils wuz in the United States and wanted to inform himself still further about it, ’tennyrate he looked the book over and said he would be glad to have the book, and he and two more of the leadin’ men nigh him in that procession bought books, Arvilly deliverin’ ’em on the spot and takin’ her money. And if the stoppage in the crowd hadn’t let up and they started on, I d’no but she would have canvassed the hull flower of the Romish meetin’-house; though we wuz told afterwards by one who pretended to know, that it wuzn’t the Pope I had talked to and Arvilly had canvassed, but some other high dignitary in the meetin’-house.