place, and accompanied him to the bench.
Then he said again:--

"Bear well in mind what I have said to you. In order that this case
might occur, that a Calabrian boy should be as though in his own house
at Turin, and that a boy from Turin should be at home in Calabria, our
country fought for fifty years, and thirty thousand Italians died. You
must all respect and love each other; but any one of you who should give
offence to this comrade, because he was not born in our province, would
render himself unworthy of ever again raising his eyes from the earth
when he passes the tricolored flag."

Hardly was the Calabrian seated in his place, when his neighbors
presented him with pens and a _print_; and another boy, from the last
bench, sent him a Swiss postage-stamp.

MY COMRADES.

Tuesday, 25th.

The boy who sent the postage-stamp to the Calabrian is the one who
pleases me best of all. His name is Garrone: he is the biggest boy in
the class: he is about fourteen years old; his head is large, his
shoulders broad; he is good, as one can see when he smiles; but it seems
as though he always thought like a man. I already know many of my
comrades. Another one pleases me, too, by the name of Coretti, and he
wears chocolate-colored trousers and a catskin cap: he is always jolly;
he is the son of a huckster of wood, who was a soldier in the war of
1866, in the squadron of Prince Umberto, and they say that he has three
medals. There is little Nelli, a poor hunchback, a weak boy, with a thin
face. There is one who is very well dressed, who always wears fine
Florentine plush, and is named Votini. On the bench in front of me there
is a boy who is called "the little mason" because his father is a mason:
his face is as round as an apple, with a nose like a small ball; he
possesses a special talent: he knows how to make _a hare's face_, and
they all get him to make a hare's face, and then they laugh. He wears a
little ragged cap, which he carries rolled up in his pocket like a
handkerchief. Beside the little mason there sits Garoffi, a long, thin,
silly fellow, with a nose and beak of a screech owl, and very small
eyes, who is always trafficking in little pens and images and
match-boxes, and who writes the lesson on his nails, in order that he
may read it on the sly. Then there is a young gentleman, Carlo Nobis,
who seems very haughty; and he is between two boys who are sympathetic
to me,--the son of a blacksmith-ironmonger, cl