y,

"BOSTON CORBETT."

The ravages of the malignant fever which had broken out in the hospital
were not confined to the patients. Surgeons and chaplain yielded their
lives at its deadly touch. Then, too, was the bond severed which had
harmoniously united a happy sisterhood for many months. Of the six who
went down to the brink of the river of death, five crossed over to the
heavenly shore. She who alone remained gives these simple memories to
the reader.

MINOR ITALIAN TRAVELS.

I.

PISA.

I am afraid that the talk of the modern railway traveller, if he is
honest, must be a great deal of the custodians, the _vetturini_, and the
_facchini_, whose agreeable acquaintance constitutes his chief knowledge
of the population among which he journeys. We do not now-a-days carry
letters recommending us to citizens of the different places. If we did,
consider the calamity we should be to the be-travelled Italian
communities we now bless! No; we buy our through-tickets, and we put up
at the hotels praised in the hand-book, and are very glad of a little
conversation with any native, however adulterated he may be by contact
with the world to which we belong. I do not blush to own that I love the
whole rascal race which ministers to our curiosity and preys upon us,
and I am not ashamed to have spoken so often as I have done in former
sketches of the lowly and rapacious but interesting porters who opened
to me the different gates of that great realm of wonders, Italy. I doubt
if they can be much known to the dwellers in the land, though they are
the intimates of all sojourners and passengers; and if I have any regret
in the matter, it is that I did not more diligently study them when I
could. The opportunity, once lost, seldom recurs; they are all but as
transitory as the Object of Interest itself. I remember that years ago,
when I first visited Cambridge, there was an old man appeared to me in
the character of Genius of the College Grounds, who showed me all the
notable things in our city,--its treasures of art, its monuments,--and
ended by taking me into his wood-house, and sawing me off from a
wind-fallen branch of the Washington Elm a bit of the sacred wood for a
remembrancer. Where now is that old man? He no longer exists for me,
neither he nor his wood-house nor his dwelling-house. Let me look for a
month about the College Grounds, and I shall not see him. But somewhere
in the regions of traveller's faery he