Pompeii.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 129, 21 November 1885, Page 6

Pompeii.

Eigiitken hundred years ago, life suddenly stopped in the streets of Pompeii. Many o' rhe inhabitants escaped from the showers o1o 1 ashes and stones which Vesuvius dropped upon the doomed city, but they leftbebinn 'hem hundreds of thinys which illustrate he familiar saying. *' There is nothing news under the f-un." Tho^eold Pompemns wen very modern. They had folding-doors and hot water urns ; they put gratings to theii windows and made rockeries in their gar dons ; their n>t< el-yards areexactly like thopt our own eh« ese dealer uses. Their childier) had toys like ours - bean>, lion-<, piga, catf, dogs -made of clay, and sometimesserving an jugs also. People wrote on walls, and cat their names on seats, just as we do also. They kept birds in cages likewise. The> gave tokens at the do r of their places ol entertainment the people in the gallen had pigeon* made of a sort of terra cotta They put lam pa inside of the hollow eye.of the masks that adorned their fountains. They even made grott >e>of shells vulgarity itself is ancient. They ate sausages and hung up strings of onions. They had stands tur public vehicles, and the school master used a birch to the dunces. They put stepping-stones across the roarlp, that the dainty young patricians and th< j pursy i-enators might not soil their pildtd saudals. It was never cold enough for their pipes to burst, but they turned their watei on and off with taps, and their cook.shops had marble counters. They clapped their offenders into the stocks — two gladiators were there for eighteen yeais. When theii crockery was broke they riveted it. At Herculaneum theie is a huge wine jar half buried in the earth. It ba« been badly broken, but it was s>o neatly riveted with many rivets that it no doubt held ihe wine kept as well as ever. ThoFe rivets have lasted eighteen hundred years It is a strange thing to think about. YVhat would the housewife have 'aid if some one had told her that her cracked pot would outlast the Roman Empire ?