of despair of your mother, if
she were some day forced to say, "Enrico, I cannot give you any
bread even to-day!" When I give a soldo to a beggar, and he says to
me, "God preserve your health, and the health of all belonging to
you!" you cannot understand the sweetness which these words produce
in my heart, the gratitude that I feel for that poor man. It seems
to me certain that such a good wish must keep one in good health
for a long time, and I return home content, and think, "Oh, that
poor man has returned to me very much more than I gave him!" Well,
let me sometimes feel that good wish called forth, merited by you;
draw a soldo from your little purse now and then, and let it fall
into the hand of a blind man without means of subsistence, of a
mother without bread, of a child without a mother. The poor love
the alms of boys, because it does not humiliate them, and because
boys, who stand in need of everything, resemble themselves: you see
that there are always poor people around the schoolhouses. The alms
of a man is an act of charity; but that of a child is at one and
the same time an act of charity and a caress--do you understand? It
is as though a soldo and a flower fell from your hand together.
Reflect that you lack nothing, and that they lack everything, that
while you aspire to be happy, they are content simply with not
dying. Reflect, that it is a horror, in the midst of so many
palaces, along the streets thronged with carriages, and children
clad in velvet, that there should be women and children who have
nothing to eat. To have nothing to eat! O God! Boys like you, as
good as you, as intelligent as you, who, in the midst of a great
city, have nothing to eat, like wild beasts lost in a desert! Oh,
never again, Enrico, pass a mother who is begging, without placing
a soldo in her hand!

THY FATHER.

DECEMBER.

THE TRADER.

Thursday, 1st.

MY father wishes me to have some one of my companions come to the house
every holiday, or that I should go to see one of them, in order that I
may gradually become friends with all of them. Sunday I shall go to walk
with Votini, the well-dressed boy who is always polishing himself up,
and who is so envious of Derossi. In the meantime, Garoffi came to the
house to-day,--that long, lank boy, with the nose like an owl's