the students to Pompeii, in order to be ready there to
receive Mrs. Gray and her party, and he had stationed this man at the
gate to watch for them, with directions to send the boy in for him at an
appointed place, as soon as they should arrive. The boy soon found Mr.
George, and he came immediately back to the gate. Of course the whole
party were very much pleased to see him.

"And yet," said Mrs. Gray, "Rollo has managed so well that I should not
have felt any anxiety if we had continued under his sole charge all
day."

The party now commenced their exploration of Pompeii. They found it, as
they had expected, all open to the day. A great many of the streets,
with all the houses bordering them, had been cleared, and all the sand
and gravel under which they had been buried had been carted away.
Immense heaps of this rubbish were lying outside the entrance, and the
party had passed them in the carriage on their approach to the town.
They had been lying there so long, however, that they were covered with
grass and small trees, and they looked like great railroad embankments.

Indeed, the appearance which Pompeii presents now is that of a large
open village of ruined and roofless one-storied houses. Many of the
houses were originally two stories high, it is true; but the upper
stories have been destroyed or shaken down, and in general it is the
lower story only that now remains.

The structure of the houses, in respect to plan and general arrangement,
is very different from that of the dwellings built in our towns at the
present day. The chief reasons for the difference arise from the absence
of windows and chimneys in the houses of the ancients, and of course the
leaving out of windows and chimneys in a house makes it necessary to
change every thing.

The inhabitants of Pompeii had no chimneys, because the climate there is
so mild that they seldom needed a fire; and when they did need one, it
was easier to make a small one in an open vessel, and let it stand in
the middle of the room, or wherever it was required, than to make a
chimney and a fireplace. The open pan in which the fires were made in
those days stood on legs, and could be moved about any where. The fire
was made of small twigs cut from the trees. The people would let the pan
stand in the open air until the twigs were burnt to coal, and then they
would carry the pan, with the embers still glowing, into the room which
they wished to warm, and place it whe