Sardinia's snowy mountain tops fringing the
southern sky.
The line comes back to me from school days, as I gaze on those
mountain-tops, bare and rugged, and snowless to-day. Sardinia is one
of the largest islands in the Mediterranean. It has a population of
more than 700,000. Once one of the granaries of Carthage, and later
of imperial Rome, it is now in great part untilled and barren. The
natives are more like Spaniards than Italians, though the island
belongs to Italy. In certain districts of the interior the people
speak the Latin tongue, which serves to confute the received
notion--never more than a wretched half-truth, and not even as
much--that Latin is a dead language. What, the language of the
Church Catholic a dead language! Not while she lives, and the
eternal years of God are hers.
Christmas at sea; Christmas without the wonted Christmas cheer;
Christmas far from home and friends. But so were Mary and Joseph on
that first Christmas night in Bethlehem, far from home and friends.
And, please God, we are going to land in Naples to-morrow in time to
celebrate the Christ-Mass.
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