of
contagious diseases, having courageously sacrificed themselves to
cure the children; think of all those who in shipwrecks, in
conflagrations, in famines, in moments of supreme danger, have
yielded to infancy the last morsel of bread, the last place of
safety, the last rope of escape from the flames, to expire content
with their sacrifice, since they preserved the life of a little
innocent. Such dead as these are innumerable, Enrico; every
graveyard contains hundreds of these sainted beings, who, if they
could rise for a moment from their graves, would cry the name of a
child to whom they sacrificed the pleasures of youth, the peace of
old age, their affections, their intelligence, their life: wives of
twenty, men in the flower of their strength, octogenarians,
youths,--heroic and obscure martyrs of infancy,--so grand and so
noble, that the earth does not produce as many flowers as should
strew their graves. To such a degree are ye loved, O children!
Think to-day on those dead with gratitude, and you will be kinder
and more affectionate to all those who love you, and who toil for
you, my dear, fortunate son, who, on the day of the dead, have, as
yet, no one to grieve for.

THY MOTHER.

[Illustration: THE CHARCOAL MAN AND THE GENTLEMAN.--Page 27.]

NOVEMBER.

MY FRIEND GARRONE.

Friday, 4th.

THERE had been but two days of vacation, yet it seemed to me as though I
had been a long time without seeing Garrone. The more I know him, the
better I like him; and so it is with all the rest, except with the
overbearing, who have nothing to say to him, because he does not permit
them to exhibit their oppression. Every time that a big boy raises his
hand against a little one, the little one shouts, "Garrone!" and the big
one stops striking him. His father is an engine-driver on the railway;
he has begun school late, because he was ill for two years. He is the
tallest and the strongest of the class; he lifts a bench with one hand;
he is always eating; and he is good. Whatever he is asked for,--a
pencil, rubber, paper, or penknife,--he lends or gives it; and he
neither talks nor laughs in school: he always sits perfectly motionless
on a bench that is too narrow for him, with his spine curved forward,
and his big head between his shoulders; and when I look at him, he
smiles at me with his eyes half closed