!"
All sprang into the saddle, the troop drew together and resumed its
road.

And a few hours later the little dead boy received the honors of war.

At sunset the whole line of the Italian advance-posts marched forward
towards the foe, and along the same road which had been traversed in the
morning by the detachment of cavalry, there proceeded, in two files, a
heavy battalion of sharpshooters, who, a few days before, had valiantly
watered the hill of San Martino with blood. The news of the boy's death
had already spread among the soldiers before they left the encampment.
The path, flanked by a rivulet, ran a few paces distant from the house.
When the first officers of the battalion caught sight of the little body
stretched at the foot of the ash-tree and covered with the tricolored
banner, they made the salute to it with their swords, and one of them
bent over the bank of the streamlet, which was covered with flowers at
that spot, plucked a couple of blossoms and threw them on it. Then all
the sharpshooters, as they passed, plucked flowers and threw them on the
body. In a few minutes the boy was covered with flowers, and officers
and soldiers all saluted him as they passed by: "Bravo, little Lombard!"
"Farewell, my lad!" "I salute thee, gold locks!" "Hurrah!" "Glory!"
"Farewell!" One officer tossed him his medal for valor; another went and
kissed his brow. And flowers continued to rain down on his bare feet, on
his blood-stained breast, on his golden head. And there he lay asleep on
the grass, enveloped in his flag, with a white and almost smiling face,
poor boy! as though he heard these salutes and was glad that he had
given his life for his Lombardy.

THE POOR.

Tuesday, 29th.

To give one's life for one's country as the Lombard boy did, is a
great virtue; but you must not neglect the lesser virtues, my son.
This morning as you walked in front of me, when we were returning
from school, you passed near a poor woman who was holding between
her knees a thin, pale child, and who asked alms of you. You looked
at her and gave her nothing, and yet you had some coppers in your
pocket. Listen, my son. Do not accustom yourself to pass
indifferently before misery which stretches out its hand to you and
far less before a mother who asks a copper for her child. Reflect
that the child may be hungry; think of the agony of that poor
woman. Picture to yourself the sob