ANCIENT ROME.

Waikato Times, Volume XIII, Issue 1058, 5 April 1879, Page 3

ANCIENT ROME.

ITS STOBY AS TOLD BYTHE HAWKEYE HISTORIAN. Rome was settled by two young men •who came to Henry county about 753 B.C. Their grandpapa's brother would ' have sent them down the river on a steam - boat, only there was no steam-boat. But the young men did not drown ; they just floated along like deep ■water Baptists until they came to Rome, where they landed. They were only a few weeks old, so they hired an old wolf to take care of them and give them rations. Then when they were old enough they slew the old wolf and took her Bcalp to the county clerk's office and got 25d015. for it. Afterwards they called on the old gentleman who had paid their passage down the river and had it out with him. Remos held the old gentleman's ears while Romulus passed a thin slab of steel from the sterno-hyoid muscle thiough the common carotio arteries and jugular vein, and emerging a little below the occipital bone. Shortly aftewards the action of the heart became irregular and weak, the pulse fell rapidly, and there was a general decrease in the temperature of the body, respiration became difficult and finally impossible, articulation was impeded, and when the family physician arrived it was evident that a permanent suspension of the vital forces had already ensued. It is claimed by some historians, indeed, that poor old Amulius never recovered the shock, but died the same day, which, being wash-day, covered the memory of Amulius with ignominy. Shortly after this event the two brothers returned to Rome, where, one day, Remus, while climbing over a picket fence around his brother's water-melon patch, was shot^ by Romulus, although other authorities say ht was killed on tbe railroad, while trying to carry two quarts of Roman whisky across the track in front of a B & M. freight engine. After that, Romulns disappeared, and the Romans thiuk he went to Heaven, although the appearance of an Illinois sheriff in Rome two hours after Romulus became seldom, has caused some authorities to think he went to tbe penitentiary. Remulus and his brother were considered great men, and fitood very high in society, though it is said their ma was no better than she should have been, which wos very consistent in her. These boys had two Mars, in fact, and of them one their pa. This sounds very strange, but it is as true as anything else in this history. As Rome grew, society was rent in two great divisions. Nobody was considered anybody who did not own a red sleigh and a mouse-colored horse, and didn't live in a house with a bay window, chateau roof, mechanics' lien and a cut-throat mortgage on it. A Roman lady who, didn't belong to a literary olub, and attend conversations, and get trusted for five new hats a year was snubbed at prayer meeting and neglected at mite societies. So the patricians did all the voting and held all the offices and ran all the public institutions and spent all the public funds, and the people who smoked clay pipes and carried hods, and olerked, drove drays, did all the fighting, and paid wstopartofthetaxes.Sowheneverthe patricians caught a plebeian they sent him to gaol or. drafted him into the army. And whenever the plebeians saw a patrician alone, they mailed, him around and pelted him with stones. The patricians were called general, colonel, mayor, captain, judge, and honorable. The plebeians were called plain Bill. Once in a while, a plebeian would aspire to honor and authority, and would become a kind of brevet patrician. He wa.B $ien polled "• squire."