Mary Cassatt Tea painting

Mary Cassatt Tea paintingEdward Hopper Gas paintingEdward Hopper Ground Swell painting
THE YEAR BEFORE I CAME OF AGE AND MARRIED HAD BEEN a bad year for Rome. There was a series of earthquakes in the South of Italy which destroyed several cities. Little rain fell in the Spring and the crops looked miserable all over the country: then just before harvest time there were torrential storms which beat down and spoilt what little corn had come to ear. The downpour was so violent that the Tiber carried away the bridge and made the lower part of the City navigable by boat for seven days. A famine seemed threatening and Augustus sent commissioners to Egypt and other parts to buy huge quantities of corn. The public granaries had been depleted because of a bad harvest the year before-though not so bad as this. The commissioners succeeded in buying a certain amount of corn, but at a high price and not really enough. There