out of some abandoned clay or mortar, or wet sand if there was nothing
better. The plastic material took strange shapes of beauty under his
hands. It was as if life had been somehow breathed into it by his
touch, and it ordered itself as none of the other boys could make it.
His fingers were tipped with genius, but he did not know it, for his
work was only for the hour. He destroyed it as soon as it was made, to
try for something better. What he had made never satisfied him--one of
the surest proofs that he was capable of great things, had he only
known it. But, as I said, he did not.

The teacher from the Industrial School came upon him one day, sitting
in the corner by himself, and breathing life into the mud. She stood
and watched him awhile, unseen, getting interested, almost excited, as
he worked on. As for Paolo, he was solving the problem that had eluded
him so long, and had eyes or thought for nothing else. As his fingers
ran over the soft clay, the needle, the hard bench, the pants, even
the sweater himself, vanished out of his sight, out of his life, and
he thought only of the beautiful things he was fashioning to express
the longing in his soul, which nothing mortal could shape. Then,
suddenly, seeing and despairing, he dashed it to pieces, and came back
to earth and to the tenement.

But not to the pants and the sweater. What the teacher had seen that
day had set her to thinking, and her visit resulted in a great change
for Paolo. She called at night and had a long talk with his mother and
uncle through the medium of the priest, who interpreted when they got
to a hard place. Uncle Pasquale took but little part in the
conversation. He sat by and nodded most of the time, assured by the
presence of the priest that it was all right. The widow cried a good
deal, and went more than once to take a look at the boy, lying snugly
tucked in his bed in the inner room, quite unconscious of the weighty
matters that were being decided concerning him. She came back the last
time drying her eyes, and laid both her hands in the hand of the
teacher. She nodded twice and smiled through her tears, and the
bargain was made. Paolo's slavery was at an end.

His friend came the next day and took him away, dressed up in his best
clothes, to a large school where there were many children, not of his
own people, and where he was received kindly. There dawned that day a
new life for Paolo, for in the afternoon trays of modelling-clay w