“Face ’em?” sez he; “if they said anything, tell ’em to start a moat of their own; tell ’em you couldn’t keep house without one.”
“Oh, shaw!” sez I; “come and look at this vase.”
And, indeed, we had entered a greenhouse full of the most beautiful flowers and rare plants, and wuz even then in front of the famous Warwick vase. It is a huge, round, white marble vase that holds one hundred and thirty-six gallons, with clusters of grapes and leaves and tendrils; and vine branches, exquisitely wrought, run round the top and form the two large handles, with other designs full of grace and beauty all wrought in it. How old this vase is nobody knows, but it wuz used by somebody probbly centuries before old Warwick Castle wuz ever thought on.
Who wuz it that drinked out of it? How did they look? How come it sunk in the bottom of the lake? I d’no, nor Josiah don’t.
It wuz found at the bottom of a lake near Tivoli by Sir William Hamilton, Ambassador then at the court of Naples.
I gazed pensively on the vine-clad spear of Mr. Bacchus carved on it, and sez I to Josiah—
“How true it is that that sharp spear that Mr. Bacchus brandishes is covered with beautiful vines and flowers at first; but it stabs,” sez I—“it stabs hard, and,” sez I, “who knows but somebody that had been pierced to the heart by that spear of hisen, a-reachin’ ’em mebby through the ruined life of some loved one—who knows but what he got so sick of seein’ them symbols of drinkin’ revels that he jest pitched it into the lake?”
“Keep on!” sez Josiah, “keep on! I believe you’d keep up your dum temperance talk if you wuz on the way to the scaffold.”
“That would be the time to preach it,” sez I; “scaffolds is jest what drinkin’ revels lead to, and if it wuz my last words, mebby folks would pay some attention to what I said.”
“Wall, wait till then,” sez he. “I have got to have a little rest. I am dyin’ for a little food, and if I git through this day alive I have got to be careful, and let my ears rest anyway.”