courage of the heart, which
does not reason, which does not waver, which dashes blindly on, like a
lightning flash, wherever it hears the cry of a dying man. One of these
days I will take you to the exercises of the firemen, and I will point
out to you Corporal Robbino; for you would be very glad to know him,
would you not?"

I replied that I should.

"Here he is," said my father.

I turned round with a start. The two firemen, having completed their
inspection, were traversing the room in order to reach the door.

My father pointed to the smaller of the men, who had straps of gold
braid, and said, "Shake hands with Corporal Robbino."

The corporal halted, and offered me his hand; I pressed it; he made a
salute and withdrew.

"And bear this well in mind," said my father; "for out of the thousands
of hands which you will shake in the course of your life there will
probably not be ten which possess the worth of his."

FROM THE APENNINES TO THE ANDES.

(_Monthly Story._)

Many years ago a Genoese lad of thirteen, the son of a workingman, went
from Genoa to America all alone to seek his mother.

His mother had gone two years before to Buenos Ayres, a city, the
capital of the Argentine Republic, to take service in a wealthy family,
and to thus earn in a short time enough to place her family once more in
easy circumstances, they having fallen, through various misfortunes,
into poverty and debt. There are courageous women--not a few--who take
this long voyage with this object in view, and who, thanks to the large
wages which people in service receive there, return home at the end of a
few years with several thousand lire. The poor mother had wept tears of
blood at parting from her children,--the one aged eighteen, the other,
eleven; but she had set out courageously and filled with hope.

The voyage was prosperous: she had no sooner arrived at Buenos Ayres
than she found, through a Genoese shopkeeper, a cousin of her husband,
who had been established there for a very long time, a good Argentine
family, which gave high wages and treated her well. And for a short time
she kept up a regular correspondence with her family. As it had been
settled between them, her husband addressed his letters to his cousin,
who transmitted them to the woman, and the latter handed her replies to
him, and he despatched them to Genoa, adding a few lines of his own. As
she was earning eighty lire a month and spending nothing for herself,