June 3d.
To-morrow is the National Festival Day.
TO-DAY is a day of national mourning. Garibaldi died last night. Do
you know who he is? He is the man who liberated ten millions of
Italians from the tyranny of the Bourbons. He died at the age of
seventy-five. He was born at Nice, the son of a ship captain. At
eight years of age, he saved a woman's life; at thirteen, he
dragged into safety a boat-load of his companions who were
shipwrecked; at twenty-seven, he rescued from the water at
Marseilles a drowning youth; at forty-one, he saved a ship from
burning on the ocean. He fought for ten years in America for the
liberty of a strange people; he fought in three wars against the
Austrians, for the liberation of Lombardy and Trentino; he defended
Rome from the French in 1849; he delivered Naples and Palermo in
1860; he fought again for Rome in 1867; he combated with the
Germans in defence of France in 1870. He was possessed of the flame
of heroism and the genius of war. He was engaged in forty battles,
and won thirty-seven of them.
When he was not fighting, he was laboring for his living, or he
shut himself up in a solitary island, and tilled the soil. He was
teacher, sailor, workman, trader, soldier, general, dictator. He
was simple, great, and good. He hated all oppressors, he loved all
peoples, he protected all the weak; he had no other aspiration than
good, he refused honors, he scorned death, he adored Italy. When he
uttered his war-cry, legions of valorous men hastened to him from
all quarters; gentlemen left their palaces, workmen their ships,
youths their schools, to go and fight in the sunshine of his glory.
In time of war he wore a red shirt. He was strong, blond, and
handsome. On the field of battle he was a thunder-bolt, in his
affections he was a child, in affliction a saint. Thousands of
Italians have died for their country, happy, if, when dying, they
saw him pass victorious in the distance; thousands would have
allowed themselves to be killed for him; millions have blessed and
will bless him.
He is dead. The whole world mourns him. You do not understand him
now. But you will read of his deeds, you will constantly hear him
spoken of in the course of your life; and gradually, as you grow
up, his image will grow before you; when you become a man, you will
behold him as a giant; and when you are no longer in the world,
when your sons' sons and those who shall be born from them are no
longer among the living, the generations will still behold on high
his luminous head as a redeemer of the peoples, crowned by the
names of his victories as with a circlet of stars; and the brow and
the soul of every Italian will beam when he utters his name.