If they'd just done a little inventing now, instead--worried out the idea of steam, or gas, or electricity--why Rome might never have fallen to this day." And no one interfered with Mr.Malt's idea that the fall of Rome was a purely commercial disaster.

Doubtless it was out of regard for his feelings, but he was exactly the sort of man to compel you to prove your assertion.
We found the boundaries of the first Forum of the Republic, and poppa, pacing it in a soft felt hat and a silk duster, offered a Senatorial contrast to history.

He looked round him with dignity and made the gesture which goes with his most sustained oratorical flights.

"I wouldn't have backed up Cato in everything," he said thoughtfully.

"No.
There were occasions on which I should have voted against the old man, and the little American school-boys of to-day would have had to decline 'Mugwumpus' in consequence." And at the thought of Cannae and Trasimene the nineteenth century Senator from Illinois fiercely pulled his beard.
We turned our pilgrim feet to where the Colosseum wheels against the sky and gives up the world's eternal supreme note of splendour and of cruelty; and along the solitary dusty Appian Way, as if it were a country lane of the time we know, came a ragged Roman urchin with a basket.