Jennie Hall

“ He stood under the sculptors’ awning and gazed at the marble people more beautiful than life. And when he came upon Apollo striking his lyre, his heart leaped into his mouth. He stood quiet for a long time gazing at this god of song. Then he walked out of the tent with shining eyes.
At last it grew dark, and torches began to blaze in front of the booths.
“Shall we go home, Charmides?” said Glaucon.
“Oh, no!” cried the boy. “I haven’t seen it all. I am not tired. It is gayer now than ever with the torches. See all those shining flames.” ”

“ O blessed gods!"
But what a sea! It roared and tossed and boiled. While Ariston looked, a ship was picked up and crushed and swallowed. The sea poured up the steep shore for hundreds of feet. Then it rushed back and left its strange fish gasping on the dry land. Great rocks fell from the sky, and steam rose up as they splashed into the water. The sun was growing fainter. The black cloud was coming on. Soon it would be dark. And then what? Ariston lay down where the last huge wave had cooled the ground. "It is all over, Caius," he murmured. "I shall never see Athens again." ”

“ We can imagine men stopping in this pleasant shade as they passed. The busy slave inside the shop whips out a cup and a graceful, long-handled ladle and dips out the sweet-smelling wine from the wide-mouthed jar. And we can imagine how the cups fell clattering from the men’s hands when Vesuvius thundered. In one shop, indeed, the excavators found an overturned cup on the counter and a wine stain on the marble. But the most interesting shops are the bakeries. There were twenty of them in Pompeii. You will see the ovens in the courtyard. They are big beehives built of stone or brick. ”

“ He was looking up at the crowd, hoping to see his father and brother. And at every step men reached out a hand to him or called to him, until at last Menon's own loving arms pulled him up upon the benches. Then there was such a noise that no one heard any one else, but everybody knew that everybody was happy. Men pushed their heads over other men's shoulders, and boys peeped between their fathers' legs to see the Olympic winner. And in that circle of faces Menon stood with his arms about Creon, laughing and crying. And Charmides clung to his brother's hand. ”

“ You will tread the very paving stones that men's feet trampled nineteen hundred years ago as they fled from the volcano. You will climb a steep, narrow street. This is the street the fishermen and sailors used in olden times when they came in from the river or sea, carrying baskets of fish or leading mules loaded with goods from their ships. This is the street where people poured out to the sea on that terrible day of the eruption.
You will pass a ruined temple of Apollo with standing columns and lonely altar and steps that lead to a room that is gone. ”

“ Then those Norsemen who had never been afraid of anything turned and ran. But when they came to the top of a rough hill Thorfinn cried:
"What are we doing? Shall we die here in this empty land with no one to bury us? We are leaving our women."
Then one of the women ran out of the hut where they were hiding.
"Give me a sword!" she cried. "I can drive them back. Are Norsemen not better than these savages?"
Then those warriors stopped, ashamed, and stood up before the wild men and fought so fiercely that the strangers turned and fled down to their canoes and paddled away. ”

“ Olympia sat lonely and deserted by her river banks. Summer winds whirled dust under her porches. Rabbits made burrows in Zeus' altar. Doors rusted off their hinges. Foxes made their dens in Hera's temple. Men came now and then to melt up a bronze statue for swords or to haul away the stones of her temples for building. The Alpheios kept eating away its banks and cutting under statues and monuments. Many a beautiful thing crumbled and fell into the river and was rolled on down to the sea. Men sometimes found a bronze helmet or a marble head in the bed of the stream. ”

“ Around it runs a paved porch with pretty columns. Here you will walk in the shade and look out at the gay little garden, blooming in the sunshine. In every corner tiny streams of water spurt from little statues of bronze and marble and trickle into cool basins. Marble tables stand among the flowers. You will half expect a slave to bring out old drinking cups and wine bowls and set them here for his master’s pleasure, or tablets and stylus for him to write his letters. Everything is in order and beautiful. It was not quite so when the excavators uncovered this house. ”

“ Such was the palace of the king. Below it lay many poorer houses, inside the walls and out. We can imagine men and women walking about this city. We raise the warriors from their graves. They carry their golden cups in their hands. Their rings glisten on their fingers, and their bracelets on their arms. Perhaps, instead of the golden armor, they wear breastplates of bronze of the same shape, but these same swords hang at their sides. We look at their golden masks and see their straight noses and their short beards. ”

“ He saw himself standing here in the market place of Pompeii. He heard himself sold for a slave. At that thought he threw down his brush and groaned.
But soon he grew calmer. Perhaps the sweet drip of the fountain cooled his hot thoughts. Perhaps the soft touch of the sun soothed his heart. He took up his brushes again and set to work.
"The last figure shall be the most beautiful of all," he said to himself. "It is my own god, Apollo." ”

“ The slaves and foreigners crowded at the gate to see the procession pass, for on this first holy day only freedmen and Greeks of pure blood might visit the sacred shrines. When Charmides passed through, his heart leaped. Here was no empty field with a few altars. He had never seen a greater crowd in the busy market place at home in Athens. But here the people were even more beautiful than the Athenians. Their limbs were round and perfect. They stood always gracefully. Their garments hung in delicate folds, for they were people made by great artists—people of marble and of bronze. ”

“ The altar was a huge pile of ashes. For hundreds of years Greeks had sacrificed here. The holy ashes had piled up and piled up until they stood as a hill more than twenty feet high. The people waited around the foot of it, watching. The priests walked up its side. Men led up the sleek cattle to be slain for the feast of the gods. And on the very top a fire leaped toward heaven. Far up in the sky Charmides could half see the beautiful gods leaning down and smiling upon their worshiping people.
Then he turned and walked with the crowd under the temple porch and into the great, dim room. ”

“ Ariston was looking at a little bronze statue that stood on a tall, slender column. It tottered to and fro in the earthquake. Then it fell, crashing into the piled-up stones. In a few minutes the falling shower had covered it.
Ariston began to be more afraid. He thought of Death as he had painted him in his picture. He imagined that he saw him hiding behind a column. He thought he heard his cruel laugh. He tried to look up toward the mountain, but the stones pelted him down. He felt terribly alone. Was all the rest of the world dead? ”

“ All the gods of Olympos were there, and athletes of years gone by, wrestling, running, hurling the disc. There were bronze chariots with horses of bronze to draw them and men of bronze to hold the reins. There were heroes of Troy still fighting. And here and there were little altars of marble or stone or earth or ashes with an ancient, holy statue. At every one the procession halted. The priests poured a libation and chanted a prayer. The people sang a hymn. Many left gifts piled about the altar. Before Hermes Charmides left his little clay image of the god. ”

“ Now the full moon had risen, and the world was swimming in silver light. The statue of Victory hung over the sacred place on spread wings. Many another great form on its high pillar seemed standing in the deep sky above the world. The little pool in the pebbly river had stars in the bottom.
“This Kladeos is a savage little river in the spring,” said Glaucon. “It tries to tear away our Olympia or drown it or cover it with sand. You see, men have had to fence it in with stone walls.”
But Charmides was looking at the sacred place and its soft shining statues in the sky. ”

“ Foes'-fear Every day the boy Harald heard some such story of war or of the gods, until he could see Thor riding among the storm-clouds and throwing his hammer, until he knew that a brave man has many wounds, but never a one on his back. ”

“ There are game birds and fish and wine jars all pictured here in beautiful colors. There are cupids playing about a flour mill and cupids weaving garlands. There are also pictures of the gods and heroes and the deeds they did. Imagine this painted market full of chattering people, the little shops gay with piles of beautiful fruit and vegetables, the graceful columns and dark porches adding beauty. Imagine these people crying out and running and these columns swaying and falling when Vesuvius bellowed and shook the earth. ”

“ A hundred pictures were floating in Charmides’ mind—Phidias, Zeus, Creon with the strigil, his own little Hermes, the strange people in the fair, the marble Apollo under the sculptor’s tent. In a few moments they turned a corner and came out into the soft moonlight. A little beyond gleamed a broad river, the Alphaeus. Charmides and the slave went over and strolled along its banks. Here they were again in the crowd and among tents. They saw a group of people and went toward them. A man sat on a low knoll a little above the crowd. ”

“ They are no place now for free men."
So by the time Ingolf was an old man, Iceland was no longer an empty land. Every valley was spotted with bright feast halls and temples. Horses and cattle pastured on the hillsides. Smoke curled up from kitchens and smithies. Gay ships sailed the waters, taking Iceland cloth and wool and Iceland fish and oil and the soft feathers of Iceland birds to Norway to sell, and bringing back wood and flour and grain.
When Ingolf died, his men drew up on the shore the boat in which he had come to Iceland. ”

“ The ashes that had covered Pompeii changed to rich soil. Green vines and shrubs and trees sprang up and covered it, and flowers made it gay. Therefore people said to themselves:
"After all, she is a good old mountain. There will never be another eruption while we are alive."
So villages grew up around her feet. Farmers came and built little houses and planted crops and were happy working the fertile soil. They did not dream that they were living above a buried city, that the roots of their vines sucked water from an old Roman house, that buried statues lay gazing up toward them as they worked. ”

“ They see no gleaming roofs and high-lifted statues and joyful games. They walk among sad ruins. But they can tread the gymnasium floor where Creon and many another victor wrestled. They can enter the gate of the grass-grown stadion. They can see the fallen columns of the temple of Zeus. In the museum they can see the statues of its pediments and, at the end of the long hall, they see Victory stepping toward them. They can wander on the banks of the Kladeos and the Alpheios. They can climb Mount Kronion and see the whole little plain and imagine it gay with tents and moving people. ”

“ Vesuvius is a dangerous thing, but very beautiful. It stands tall and pointed and graceful against a lovely sky. Its little cloud waves from it like a plume. At night the mountain is swallowed by the dark. But the red rivers down its slopes glare in the sky. It is beautiful and terrible like a tiger. Thousands of people have loved it. They have climbed it and looked down its crater. It is like looking into the heart of the earth. One of these travelers wrote of his visit in 1793. He said:
“For many days Vesuvius has been in action. I have watched it from Naples. ”

“ Every land pours rich things into our treasure-chest. Ivar has been to a strange country where it is all sand and is very hot. The people call their country Arabia. They have never heard of Thor or Odin. Ivar brought beautiful striped cloth from there, and wonderful, sweet-smelling waters. Oh! when shall the white horses of the sea lead me out to strange lands and glorious battles?"
But Harald did something besides listen to stories. Every morning he was up at sunrise and went with a thrall to feed the hunting dogs. Thorstein taught him to swim in the rough waters of the fiord. ”