May 15. Naples — The Boy With the Goose
The Pompeian bronze, which the guide books and catalogues name The Boy with the Goose, is quite wrongly named. The lad carries a wine-skin. The rude, swollen outlines of the pig are clear, and the attitude of the boy one may see any water-seller in Tangier assume when called upon for a drink—the arm raised, the body tilted back upon the hip to elevate the lip of the skin, so that no more water may flow than is needed. The whole, a delicious bit of genre, smiling and vivid after two thousand years.
There is a curious vitality of a trifling custom discoverable here in the Pompeian museum. The great bronze horses of Balbo have forelocks wrapped and twisted in exactly the same fashion that still prevails all along this Neapolitan shore. The breed has changed utterly; bone and structure have altered and shrunk, but the vetturino, who drives through the streets of Naples to-day, twists up that bit of hair in exactly the same manner as did the coachman of Glaucus or Balbo.