But Arvilly looked at it different. She said she believed her husband drinked and got led off into all sorts of sins and made Celia no end of trouble and riz this monument up to smooth things over. But I sez, "Mebby things wuz different then;" but didn't really spoze so, human nater havin' capered about the same from the start. "'Tennyrate," sez I, "I shall always believe that Miss Crassus wuz good as gold, and this great massive monument that it seems as if the hand of Time can't ever throw down I take as a great compliment to my sect as well as Celia Crassus." But Arvilly wuz as firm as a rock to the last in her belief that Mr. Crassus drinked and that Miss Crassus wuz broken-hearted by her grief and anxiety and tryin' to cover up her pardner's doin's as the wives of drunkards will, and tryin' to keep her children from follerin' their pa's dretful example, and then after he'd jest killed her with these doin's he rared up this great monument as a conscience soother. Josiah thought Celia wuz equinomical and a wonderful good cook, and her grateful pardner riz this up in honor of his blissful life with her. Miss Meechim thought that at all events she must have been genteel. Robert and Dorothy looked at its massive walls, and I hearn him say sunthin' to her kinder low about "how love wuz stronger than time or death." But Tommy just wonnered at it, wonnered who Celia Matella wuz, how she looked, how old she wuz, if she had any little boys and girls. He jest wonnered and nothin' else, and in the end I did, too. You have no idee till you see how big the Colosseum is. It is as long as from our house to she that wuz Submit Tewksberry's, and so on round by Solomon Gowdey's back agin. You may not believe it, but it is true, and I d'no but it is bigger. It used to accommodate one hundred thousand people in its palmy days, or so I spoze they called it, when some time durin' one season five thousand beasts would be killed there fightin' with human bein's, hull armies of captives bein' torn to pieces there for the delight of them old pagans. Fathers bein' made to kill their wives and children right there for their delight. Oh, how I wished, as I told Arvilly, I could git holt of Mr. Titus and Mr. Nero and some of the rest of them leadin' men. The conqueror, Mr. Titus, brought back twelve thousand of the conquered Jews and made 'em work and toil to build up that lofty arch in memory of their own defeat and captivity and his glory. You'd think that wuz enough trouble for 'em, but I've hearn, and it come pretty straight to me, that he misused 'em more or less while they wuz workin' away at it. 'Tennyrate, they say a Jew won't go under that arch to this day and they've been seen to spit at it, and I spoze they throw things at it more or less on the sly. Sez I, "I'd gin 'em a piece of my mind if I knowed they would make me fight with a elephant the next minute."