s a boon to them, while the mere knowledge
that there is a place where repose can be had cheaply and pleasantly is
itself a source of strength. Here, so long as the visitor wishes to be
merely housed, no questions are asked; no one is refused admittance,
except for some obviously sufficient reason; it is like getting a reading
ticket for the British Museum, there is practically but one test--that is
to say, desire on the part of the visitor--the coming proves the desire,
and this suffices. A family, we will say, has just gathered its first
harvest; the heat on the plains is intense, and the malaria from the rice-
grounds little less than pestilential; what, then, can be nicer than to
lock up the house and go for three days to the bracing mountain air of
Oropa? So at daybreak off they all start trudging, it may be, their
thirty or forty miles, and reaching Oropa by nightfall. If there is a
weakly one among them, some arrangement is sure to be practicable whereby
he or she can be helped to follow more leisurely, and can remain longer
at the hospice. Once arrived, they generally, it is true, go the round
of the chapels, and make some slight show of pilgrimage, but the main
part of their time is spent in doing absolutely nothing. It is
sufficient amusement to them to sit on the steps, or lie about under the
shadow of the trees, and neither say anything nor do anything, but simply
breathe, and look at the sky and at each other. We saw scores of such
people just resting instinctively in a kind of blissful waking dream.
Others saunter along the walks which have been cut in the woods that
surround the hospice, or if they have been pent up in a town and have a
fancy for climbing, there are mountain excursions, for the making of
which the hospice affords excellent headquarters, and which are looked
upon with every favour by the authorities.

It must be remembered also that the accommodation provided at Oropa is
much better than what the people are, for the most part, accustomed to in
their own homes, and the beds are softer, more often beaten up, and
cleaner than those they have left behind them. Besides, they have
sheets--and beautifully clean sheets. Those who know the sort of place
in which an Italian peasant is commonly content to sleep, will understand
how much he must enjoy a really clean and comfortable bed, especially
when he has not got to pay for it. Sleep, in the circumstances of
comfort which most readers wil