that was crushing down upon her.  But women were not the only ones who showed an avaricious disposition in the midst of the thunders and flames of Vesuvius.  Men had tried to carry off their money, and the delay had cost them their lives, and they were buried in the ashes with the coins they so highly valued.  Diomed, one of the richest men of Pompeii, abandoned his wife and daughters and was fleeing with a bag of silver when he was stifled in front of his garden by noxious vapors.  In the cellar of his house were found the corpses of seventeen women and children.

A priest was discovered in the temple of Isis, holding fast to an axe with which he had cut his way through two walls, and died at the third.  In a shop two lovers had died in each other’s arms.  A woman carrying a baby had sought refuge in a tomb, but the ashes had walled them tightly in.  A soldier died bravely at his post, erect before a city gate, one hand on his spear and the other on his mouth, as if to keep from breathing the stifling gases.

Thus perished in a short time over thirty thousand citizens and strangers in the city of Pompeii, now a city under the ground.

THE COACHMAN.

[Illustration]

When a boy sees a coachman driving two showy, high-stepping horses along the street, or, better still, over a level country road, with his long whip curling in the air, which whip he now and then flirts so as to make a sharp, cracking noise over the horses’ heads, and occasionally brings down with a light flick upon the flanks of the right or left horse,—­the carriage, shining with varnish and plate, rolling along swiftly and smoothly,—­the little boy is apt to think that coachman must be a very happy mortal.

If the man on the carriage-box sees the boy looking at him with so much admiration, he will probably throw him a jolly little laugh and a friendly nod, and, gathering up the reins and drawing them in tightly so as to arch the horses’ necks and make them look prouder and more stately than before, he will give a loud crack with his curling whip-lash, and the horses will start off at a rapid trot, and the carriage will sweep around a curve in the road so gracefully that the boy’s heart will be filled with envy—­not of the persons in the carriage—­oh, no! riding in a close carriage is a very tame and dull affair; but he will envy the driver.  An ambition springs up in his mind at that instant.  Of all things in the world he would rather be a coachman!  That shall be his business when he grows up to be a man.  And the chances are that when he goes home he tells his father so.

But if the little boy, instead of lying tucked in his warm bed, should be set down at twelve o’clock at night upon the pavement in front of that great house with the tall lamps on the steps, he would see this same coachman under conditions that he would not envy at all.