When the twins were born in Rome, all of our friends exclaimed at once, "Oh, Romulus and Remus!" but we did not name them for the city's twin founders. One reason was that one of our babies was a girl, and although we might have called her Romola, we could not make up our minds to name the dear little brother in honor of that ill-natured Remus. So notwithstanding their classic birthplace, our twins answer to common, every-day names.
We lived at the foot of the Capitol, within a stone's-throw of the Roman Forum, around which clusters so much of legend and history. The nursery window overlooked the Capitol garden, where two wolves were always stalking restlessly about in their cages. Before our twins knew a word of English, and almost as soon as they could lisp in sweet Italian accents, they heard the tale of Romulus and Remus, and knew that the great city of Rome honored this legend by keeping two live wolves at the Capitol.
When they grew older and walked through the ancient streets, they became familiar with the picture of the babes and the wolf as seen on sign-boards and placards, as well as in marble and bronze reliefs. Thus the old legend grew into their lives, and they talked it over in wise baby fashion. Whenever they went to play hide-and-seek around the statue of Marcus Aurelius, in the Capitol square, they stopped long before the poor old caged wolves, and wondered why two wolves were kept, if Remus had to be killed for his bad behavior. Once they suggested to nurse that one wolf and two babies would seem more true to history; but when she replied that they would do splendidly for the babies, they dropped the subject, lest the city fathers hear of it in some way, and feel inclined to carry out so brilliant an idea.
In their own logical way, they were quite decided as to the place where Remus, in derision, jumped over the city wall, for it would be very easy to leap a certain low point up near the Macao, where they once went to see King Humbert review his troops in honor of the German Emperor's visit to Rome.
Of course mother wrote to America about the twins' sayings and doings, and one day they received a letter from the auntie whom they had never seen. She wrote that she had a globe of goldfish, and each fish had a name, except two tiny ones, which she would leave for them to name and to own when they came to see her in the spring.