All heaped and crowded and over-built, solid and ragged,
decaying and defying decay, clinging to her traditions with both hands,
old Rome jostled before us. Presently uprose a great and crumbling arch
and a difference, and as we passed it the sound of the life of the city
died indistinctly away and a silence grew up, with the smell of the sun
upon grasses and weeds, and we stopped and looked down into Caesar's
world, which lay below us, empty. We gazed in silence for a moment, and
then Emmeline remarked that she could make as good a Forum with a box of
blocks.
"I shouldn't wonder but what you express the sentiments of all
present," said her father admiringly. "Now is it allowable for us to go
down there and make ourselves at home amongst those antique pillars, or
have we got to take the show in from here?"
"No, Malt," said the Senator, helping the ladies out, "I can't say I
agree with you. It's a dead city, that's what it is, and for my part
I've never seen anything so impressive."
"Mr. Wick," remarked Miss Callis, "has not visited Philadelphia."
"Well, for a municipal cemetery," returned Mr.
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