to the constitution of United Italy. That
book awakened the sleeping will power of the industrious dull boy. Even
his mother protested against his waste of time in trying to read English
when he was unable to conquer the primers in Italian. But he secured a
phrase-book and a grammar, and paid for them in hard labor. With those
crude implements, without a teacher, he determined to read that book.
Only one friend, a young priest in St. Mark's Cathedral, gave him any
word or look of encouragement. But his candle burned late, and the
returning daylight took him to his book to study until time for
breakfast. Then came the daily task as a messenger, or gondolier. Some
weeks or months after he began his seemingly foolish problem he rushed
into his mother's room at night, excited and noisy, shouting to her: "I
can read that book! I can read that book!" There comes a moment in the
life of every successful student of a foreign language when he suddenly
awakens to the consciousness that he can think in that language. From
that point on the work is always easy. It must have been a similar
psychological change which came into Daniel's intellect. So sudden was
it, so amazing the change, that the priest reported the case as a
miracle, and the little circle of the poor people who knew the boy
looked on him with awe. Consul-General Sparks, who represented the
United States at Venice in 1848, wrote that "Manin often mentions his
intellectual new birth, and his success in reading the life of
Washington in English spurs him on in the difficult and dangerous
undertakings connected with the efforts of Venice to get free."

When Daniel began to appreciate his ability to determine to do and to
persevere, his ambition and hope brought to him larger views of life. He
resolved to learn in other ways. He took up school books and mastered
them thoroughly, and he became known as "a boy who works slowly, but
what he does at all he does well." He soon found helpers among kind
gentlemen and secured employment in a bookstall. The accounts of his
persistence and his achievements are as thrilling and as fascinating as
any finished romance. He managed to get a college education, recognized
by Padua University; he studied law and was admitted to the bar when he
was twenty-two years of age. The Austrian judges would not admit him to
their courts, and it is said he visited his law-office regularly and
daily for nearly two years before he had a paying client. B