ague.'

'Why, they are much the same thing,' said Clodius.

'So I told him, in excuse for his coxcombry--but my youth stared me
rebukingly in the face, without taking the jest, and answered, that it
was only the insensate ear that the music pleased, whereas the book (the
description of the plague, mind you!) elevated the heart. "Ah!" quoth
the fat uncle, wheezing, "my boy is quite an Athenian, always mixing the
utile with the dulce." O Minerva, how I laughed in my sleeve! While I
was there, they came to tell the boy-sophist that his favorite freedman
was just dead of a fever. "Inexorable death!" cried he; "get me my
Horace. How beautifully the sweet poet consoles us for these
misfortunes!" Oh, can these men love, my Clodius? Scarcely even with
the senses. How rarely a Roman has a heart! He is but the mechanism of
genius--he wants its bones and flesh.'

Though Clodius was secretly a little sore at these remarks on his
countrymen, he affected to sympathize with his friend, partly because he
was by nature a parasite, and partly because it was the fashion among
the dissolute young Romans to affect a little contempt for the very
birth which, in reality, made them so arrogant; it was the mode to
imitate the Greeks, and yet to laugh at their own clumsy imitation.

Thus conversing, their steps were arrested by a crowd gathered round an
open space where three streets met; and, just where the porticoes of a
light and graceful temple threw their shade, there stood a young girl,
with a flower-basket on her right arm, and a small three-stringed
instrument of music in the left hand, to whose low and soft tones she
was modulating a wild and half-barbaric air. At every pause in the
music she gracefully waved her flower-basket round, inviting the
loiterers to buy; and many a sesterce was showered into the basket,
either in compliment to the music or in compassion to the
songstress--for she was blind.

'It is my poor Thessalian,' said Glaucus, stopping; 'I have not seen her
since my return to Pompeii. Hush! her voice is sweet; let us listen.'

THE BLIND FLOWER-GIRL'S SONG

I.

Buy my flowers--O buy--I pray!
The blind girl comes from afar;
If the earth be as fair as I hear them say,
These flowers her children are!
Do they her beauty keep?
They are fresh from her lap, I know;
For I caught them fast asleep
In h