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Contemporaneously began the -cultus- of the new single city-hearth Vesta and the kindred -cultus- of the Penates of the community. Six chaste virgins, daughters as it were of the household of the Roman people, attended to that pious service, and had to maintain the wholesome fire of the common hearth always blazing as an example and an omen to the burgesses.
Willy stood at the foot of the stairs and watched her going up. He knew she liked him to do that, that she would expect to find him there when she reached the top and looked down, panting slightly. "Good-night," he called. "Both windows open. I shall go outside to see." Then he went back to Ellen, still standing primly over her Lares and Penates. "Now tell me about it," he said. "I've left them.
Being slow people, the elder Burtons had hardly as yet realized the fact that Harry was again to be accepted among the Burton Penates as a pure divinity. Mrs. Burton, for some weeks past, had grown to be almost sublime in her wrath against him. That a man should live and treat her daughter as Florence was about to be treated!
Willie's new apartment consisted of a sitting-room, a fair-sized bedroom, and a very small bath. About the sitting-room the ladies wandered, glancing disinterestedly at the Kerr Penates. Presently Mrs. Heth opened doors and peeped into what lay beyond. "It's a good thing he's small," said she. "H'm, that thing looks like a foot-tub." Carlisle, looking over her mother's shoulder, laughed.
In the religion of Rome there was hardly anything secret except possibly the names of the gods of the city, the Penates; the real character, moreover, even of these gods was manifest to every one. Of such notions, the products of outward abstraction of the homeliest simplicity, sometimes venerable, sometimes ridiculous Roman theology was in substance made up.
I have my suspicion that one reason why the husbands cling so fondly to its beloved precincts is because it corresponds in some respects to the wonderful 'Peacestead' of the Æsir, whose strongest law was that 'no angry blow should be struck, and no spiteful word spoken within its limits. Hence it is a tempting retreat from the cyclones and typhoons that sometimes sing among a man's Lares and Penates.
Before the minute, which she timed watch in hand, was over, all came forth bearing armloads of their lares and penates. Then one of the younger men ran in again and out bearing a flaming stick from the fire. Stephen nodded, he held it to the northern edge of the thatch. The straw caught in a flash and the flame ran up the slope and along the edge of the roof like a quick match.
One knew the occupants to be far from their own Lares and Penates. "Those are the habitations of people of other islands," she said. "The people of the Paumotus, the Australs, and of Easter Island settled there. They were brought here by odious labor contractors, and died of homesickness. Those men murdered hundreds of them to gain un pen d'argent, a handful of gold.
In such cases confusion was sure to follow, and subsequent antiquarians would be tempted to write treatises proving the original connexion of Castor or Pollux with the Penates, as gods of protection in general, etc.
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