u: it has taught you, loved you, protected you. Study it in
its streets and in its people, and love it; and when you hear it
insulted, defend it.

THY FATHER.

MARCH

THE EVENING SCHOOLS.

Thursday, 2d.

LAST night my father took me to see the evening schools in our Baretti
schoolhouse, which were all lighted up already, and where the workingmen
were already beginning to enter. On our arrival we found the head-master
and the other masters in a great rage, because a little while before the
glass in one window had been broken by a stone. The beadle had darted
forth and seized a boy by the hair, who was passing; but thereupon,
Stardi, who lives in the house opposite, had presented himself, and
said:--

"This is not the right one; I saw it with my own eyes; it was Franti who
threw it; and he said to me, 'Woe to you if you tell of me!' but I am
not afraid."

Then the head-master declared that Franti should be expelled for good.
In the meantime I was watching the workingmen enter by twos and threes;
and more than two hundred had already entered. I have never seen
anything so fine as the evening school. There were boys of twelve and
upwards; bearded men who were on their way from their work, carrying
their books and copy-books; there were carpenters, engineers with black
faces, masons with hands white with plaster, bakers' boys with their
hair full of flour; and there was perceptible the odor of varnish,
hides, fish, oil,--odors of all the various trades. There also entered a
squad of artillery workmen, dressed like soldiers and headed by a
corporal. They all filed briskly to their benches, removed the board
underneath, on which we put our feet, and immediately bent their heads
over their work.

Some stepped up to the teachers to ask explanations, with their open
copy-books in their hands. I caught sight of that young and well-dressed
master "the little lawyer," who had three or four workingmen clustered
round his table, and was making corrections with his pen; and also the
lame one, who was laughing with a dyer who had brought him a copy-book
all adorned with red and blue dyes. My master, who had recovered, and
who will return to school to-morrow, was there also. The doors of the
schoolroom were open. I was amazed, when the lessons began, to see how
attentive they all were, and how they kept their eyes fixed on their
work. Yet the greater part of them, so the head-master said, for fear of