hem and across to make cool
shade. The tables were always long and narrow and built around three
sides of a rectangle. Low couches stand along the outside edges. Here
guests used to lie propped up on their left elbows with pretty cushions
to make them comfortable. In the open space in the middle of the square
servants came and went and passed the dishes across the narrow tables.
Children used to have little wooden stools and sit in this middle space
opposite their elders. But in one old ruined garden dining room you will
see a little stone bench for the children, built along the end of the
table. It must have been pleasant to have supper there with the sunset
coloring the sky, behind old Vesuvius, the cool breeze shaking the
leaves of the garden shrubs, and the fountain tinkling, and a bird
chirping in a corner, and the shadows beginning to creep under the long
porches, and the tiny flames of lamps fluttering in the dusky rooms
behind.

After you leave the house of Vettius and walk down the street, you will
come to a certain door. In the sidewalk before it you will see "Have"
spelled with bits of colored marble. It is the old Latin word for
"Welcome." It is too pleasant an invitation to refuse. Go in through
the high doorway and down the narrow passage to the atrium. Every Roman
house had this atrium. It is like a large reception hall with many
rooms opening off it--bedrooms, dining rooms, sitting rooms. Beautiful
hangings instead of doors used to shut these rooms in. The atrium had an
opening in the roof where the sun shone in and softly lighted the big
room. Here the master used to receive his guests. In the house of
Vettius the two money chests were found in the atrium. In this same room
in the house of "Welcome," there was found on the floor a little bronze
statue, a dancing faun, one of the gay friends of Dionysus. It is a tiny
thing only two feet high, but so pretty that the excavators named the
house after it--The House of the Faun. Evidently the old owner loved
beautiful things and had money to buy them. Even the floors of some of
his rooms are made in mosaic pictures. There are doves at play, and
ducks and fish and shells all laid under your feet in bright bits of
colored marble. And beyond the pleasant court with its porches and
garden is a large sitting room. In the floor of this the excavators
found the most wonderful mosaic picture of all, a picture of a battle,
with waving spears and prancing horses and fa