Tuesday, 29th.
To give one's life for one's country as the Lombard boy did, is a
great virtue; but you must not neglect the lesser virtues, my son.
This morning as you walked in front of me, when we were returning
from school, you passed near a poor woman who was holding between
her knees a thin, pale child, and who asked alms of you. You looked
at her and gave her nothing, and yet you had some coppers in your
pocket. Listen, my son. Do not accustom yourself to pass
indifferently before misery which stretches out its hand to you and
far less before a mother who asks a copper for her child. Reflect
that the child may be hungry; think of the agony of that poor
woman. Picture to yourself the sob of despair of your mother, if
she were some day forced to say, "Enrico, I cannot give you any
bread even to-day!" When I give a soldo to a beggar, and he says to
me, "God preserve your health, and the health of all belonging to
you!" you cannot understand the sweetness which these words produce
in my heart, the gratitude that I feel for that poor man. It seems
to me certain that such a good wish must keep one in good health
for a long time, and I return home content, and think, "Oh, that
poor man has returned to me very much more than I gave him!" Well,
let me sometimes feel that good wish called forth, merited by you;
draw a soldo from your little purse now and then, and let it fall
into the hand of a blind man without means of subsistence, of a
mother without bread, of a child without a mother. The poor love
the alms of boys, because it does not humiliate them, and because
boys, who stand in need of everything, resemble themselves: you see
that there are always poor people around the schoolhouses. The alms
of a man is an act of charity; but that of a child is at one and
the same time an act of charity and a caress--do you understand? It
is as though a soldo and a flower fell from your hand together.
Reflect that you lack nothing, and that they lack everything, that
while you aspire to be happy, they are content simply with not
dying. Reflect, that it is a horror, in the midst of so many
palaces, along the streets thronged with carriages, and children
clad in velvet, that there should be women and children who have
nothing to eat. To have nothing to eat! O God! Boys like you, as
good as you, as intelligent as you, who, in the midst of a great
city, have nothing to eat, like wild beasts lost in a desert! Oh,
never again, Enrico, pass a mother who is begging, without placing
a soldo in her hand!