ht in 1848.
They are not the same soldiers, but the flag is still the same. How many
have already died for our country around that banner twenty years before
you were born!"

"Here it is!" said Garrone. And in fact, not far off, the flag was
visible, advancing, above the heads of the soldiers.

"Do one thing, my sons," said the head-master; "make your scholar's
salute, with your hand to your brow, when the tricolor passes."

The flag, borne by an officer, passed before us, all tattered and faded,
and with the medals attached to the staff. We put our hands to our
foreheads, all together. The officer looked at us with a smile, and
returned our salute with his hand.

"Bravi, boys!" said some one behind us. We turned to look; it was an old
man who wore in his button-hole the blue ribbon of the Crimean
campaign--a pensioned officer. "Bravi!" he said; "you have done a fine
deed."

In the meantime, the band of the regiment had made a turn at the end of
the Corso, surrounded by a throng of boys, and a hundred merry shouts
accompanied the blasts of the trumpets, like a war-song.

"Bravi!" repeated the old officer, as he gazed upon us; "he who respects
the flag when he is little will know how to defend it when he is grown
up."

NELLI'S PROTECTOR.

Wednesday, 23d.

Nelli, too, poor little hunchback! was looking at the soldiers
yesterday, but with an air as though he were thinking, "I can never be a
soldier!" He is good, and he studies; but he is so puny and wan, and he
breathes with difficulty. He always wears a long apron of shining black
cloth. His mother is a little blond woman who dresses in black, and
always comes to get him at the end of school, so that he may not come
out in the confusion with the others, and she caresses him. At first
many of the boys ridiculed him, and thumped him on the back with their
bags, because he is so unfortunate as to be a hunchback; but he never
offered any resistance, and never said anything to his mother, in order
not to give her the pain of knowing that her son was the laughing-stock
of his companions: they derided him, and he held his peace and wept,
with his head laid against the bench.

But one morning Garrone jumped up and said, "The first person who
touches Nelli will get such a box on the ear from me that he will spin
round three times!"

Franti paid no attention to him; the box on the ear was delivered: the
fellow spun round three times, and from that time forth no