bread and sausage from home, and Raffaelle shall get a jug of water.
Your brother's boat is sound, Cesare? We'll sail along the shore to
Genoa!"
"Some one will catch sight of us and stop us," objected Raffaelle.
"Nay, we'll wait till the other boats are out. They'll all be off before
dawn and we'll have the beach to ourselves."
"I've a compass my uncle gave me on my name day," said Cesare. "I'll
bring that."
"And I'll bring some fishing lines," put in Raffaelle, unwilling to be
outdone.
So almost before they knew it the other two boys had agreed to
Giuseppe's plan, just as the boys of Nice usually unconsciously followed
his lead.
* * * * *
The Mediterranean was all silver and blue when the three boys met next
day in the early summer dawn at the pier near the Porto Olimpio where
Carlo Parodi's boat lay. Raffaelle had brought a jug of water and some
fishing lines, Giuseppe a basket of provisions, and Cesare his compass.
They could hardly wait until the last of the fishing boats had put out
to sea before they ran down the pier to embark in their own small craft.
The _Red Dragon_ was the boat's name, given her because of the painted
picture of a terrible monster that sprawled across the sail. She was old
and weather-beaten, a simple sailboat with only a shallow cabin, such as
is used in the Mediterranean to coast along the shore.
Under Giuseppe's leadership the food and water were stowed on board, the
sail raised, and the boat cast off from the pier. Cesare took the tiller
and with a light morning breeze the _Red Dragon_ drew proudly away from
the beach and headed eastward toward Genoa.
As the sun rose higher the breeze stiffened, the sail filled and the
brilliant dragon spread out his red body and tail. Each of the boys had
sailed this inland sea a hundred times before, but never had it seemed
so wonderful a place as on this summer morning. The water dashed along
the gunwale and sometimes sent a warm spray into their faces. Behind
them lay the curving harbor, beyond that the red and yellow and brown
roofs and walls of Nice, and still farther back the dim blue outlines of
the mountains.
They were so excited that for some time they forgot they had had no
breakfast. Presently Raffaelle remembered it, and Giuseppe's basket was
opened and its stock of rye bread, bologna sausage and olives handed
around. The boys were surprised to find how hungry they were, but like a
prudent captain Giuseppe would only let them eat a small part of the
rations. "Suppose we should run into a spell of calm weather before we
sighted Genoa," said he.
After breakfast Raffaelle took the helm and Cesare and Giuseppe lay up
in the bow and planned what they would do after they landed at Genoa.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the three families of Parodi, Deandreis and Garibaldi in Nice
were considerably excited. A boy in each family had disappeared. Knowing
what close friends the three boys were the fathers sought each other.
Each family had the same tale to tell.
Then came word that Carlo Parodi's boat was missing, and this gave the
searchers a clue. They went to the beach, but only to find that all the
fishing-boats had put out to sea some time ago. Signor Garibaldi,
however, was a man of resource and influence, and within an hour he had
found a coast-guard captain who would take him in pursuit. The
coast-guard boat was big and she could triple the speed of the small
_Red Dragon_. By ten o'clock the runaway boat was sighted just opposite
Monaco. The boys saw the pursuers coming, but even by crowding on all
their sail they could not gain a lead. So when the coast-guard came
alongside of them they surrendered.
Even though they had not reached Genoa, the lads had tasted the salt of
adventure. Giuseppe's father boarded the _Red Dragon_, and, treating the
whole matter as a summer's lark, helped the young sailors to bring their
boat about, and tacking across toward Monaco and then out to the deeper
sea, gave them a lesson in sailing that made them quickly forget that
they were going back to Nice.
On that sail home the father learned a good deal about Giuseppe. He
heard the boys talk freely to each other, and as he listened he realized
that this son of his was not the quiet type of boy who would make a good
priest, but that he craved the roving life of the sea, descended as he
was from generations of sailors. He himself knew the perils of the sea
only too well, how hard a man must work in its service, and how little
he might gain, and how much securer was the life on shore. But he also
knew that when once the sea called to a boy of Nice it was useless to
try to make him forget the call. Giuseppe would not make a good priest,
and he might make a good sailor. So the watchful father decided, as he
brought the little boat back to shore, to let his son follow his natural
bent.
After their adventure Giuseppe and his two friends went quietly on with
their school life. Giuseppe's father had promised to teach him something
about navigation in the evenings, and had told him that, if he would
only be patient and wait a short time, he should make a cruise in
earnest. One day, as the boy and his father were coming home from church
a tall, black-haired man stepped up to them, and, holding out his hand,
said, "Signor, will you give us something for the refugees of Italy?"
Giuseppe's father gave the man a few coins, which he received with the
greatest thanks. As they walked on the boy kept turning back to look at
the tall gaunt-faced man they had met. Finally he said, "Who was he,
father, and what did he mean by the refugees of Italy?"
The father looked down into the boy's eager eyes. "Our poor country,"
said he, "has been thrown to the ground, and different people have been
beating her and trying to keep her down, but chiefly the big,
white-coated Austrians, Giuseppe boy. Every once in a while some of our
men band together and try to do something to help Italy get to her feet
again. That man who asked for money was such a man."
"But why did he look so sad and white, father, and why did he say the
refugees?"
"Our men are very few, Giuseppe, and have poor arms, and the enemy's
army is very large and their men are veteran soldiers, so that we always
lose. Then those who fought, like that poor fellow, have to fly and seek
refuge out of Italy until the storm blows past."
Giuseppe clasped his hands behind his back, and his face grew very
thoughtful. "So that man has been to war," he said, "and for us, and the
money you gave him is going to help them the next time?"
"Exactly," said the father, with a smile at the boy's serious manner.
Giuseppe was not usually very thoughtful.
"How long do you think the refugees will have to go on fighting, father,
before the enemy are finally driven out of our land?"
"Oh, they'll have to fight for years and years, and perhaps they'll
never win, for the enemy is much stronger than we Italians."
"Then," said Giuseppe, "I'm glad, for that will give Cesare and
Raffaelle and me a chance to help them fight. I'm going to be a refugee
myself some day. Will you teach me, father, how to use a sword?"
"All in good time," said the man, smiling. "You've got your hands full
learning the points of the compass just now."
For some reason Giuseppe could not get the tall, black-haired man out of
his mind, and the next day, at recess, he told his two friends of his
meeting with him and what he had learned about him.
"Couldn't we find him or another like him, this afternoon?" suggested
Cesare, very much interested.
"We'll hunt," agreed Giuseppe. "A refugee could tell us much better
stories than those old sailors can."
After school the three boys looked through the main streets of Nice, but
saw no one asking for alms for the cause of Italy. They went down to the
harbor, but there were no such men there. Finally in a little square
they came upon the very man Giuseppe had seen the day before. He was
sitting on the grass under a tree, and seemed to be asleep, for his head
was sunk on his folded arms. They crossed over to him quietly. Although
the day was warm he had a greatcoat fastened about his shoulders and a
soft, broad-brimmed hat pulled down upon his head. He looked tired out.
The three boys stood in front of the man, and finally his eyes opened.
He smiled as he saw them staring at him. "What do you want with me,
signors?" said he.
Giuseppe dropped on to the grass beside him. "I know now what you meant
when you said the refugees of Italy yesterday," he explained. "We three
boys mean to be refugees some day. We've made a vow that we'll fight the
Austrians until there isn't one of the three of us left. We'd like very
much to hear some of the things you've done."
The man threw back his cloak and sat up a trifle straighten "Three
future refugees!" he exclaimed. "The world moves! You want to be pushing
me away already, do you? Sit down, I'll tell you what I can."
The boys sat in front of him, and listened with rapt attention while he
told them that his home was in a little town half-way between Nice and
Genoa, that he was a member of a secret society called the Carbonari,
and that the first rule of that society was that a man must do exactly
as he was told without asking why. Not long before he had received a
secret message telling him to go to the city of Milan, taking his sword
and pistols with him. He had left his wife and children and gone to
Milan, and there he had waited a long time while the leaders of the
society planned to surprise the Austrian garrison and drive the troops
out of the city.
The night of the attempt finally arrived but some one had betrayed them.
No sooner had they met at the place agreed on than word came that they
must scatter instantly if they wanted to escape the Austrian bayonets.
Each had gone his own way, trying to get as far from Milan as he could.
He had managed to get to Nice, where he was near the French border, and
could cross it at any time. Meanwhile he and the other refugees had to
ask alms or starve.
The boys had heard of the society of the Carbonari which had spread all
over Italy, and they listened to this story by one of its members with
the greatest interest. They asked him a great many questions, but he
would only answer a few of them. He only told them such facts as were
public property; inquiries about the society itself were met with a
smile and a shake of the head. Before they left him they made him take
the few coins they had in their pockets, to help him and other refugees
of their country. They also made him write their names on a piece of
paper so that when the next uprising should come they might be sent for.
And they solemnly organized a secret society among themselves to last
until the time when they would be old enough to join the Carbonari.
From that day Giuseppe kept his eyes open for any other refugees who
might be roaming through the streets of Nice. Occasionally he found some
war-worn soldier or sailor whom the authorities allowed to sit in the
sun in one of the city squares or down on the quays, but younger and
more active refugees were scarce, and preferred to cross the frontier to
Marseilles.
Giuseppe and Raffaelle and Cesare, however, were not to be discouraged,
and as soon as they could they laid their hands on long cloaks and
broad-brimmed hats, and dressed as nearly as possible like their
black-haired friend. They invented countersigns and mottoes, planned
conspiracies, and patterned themselves as nearly after the Carbonari as
they could. But there was no new uprising at that time, and so after a
while the boys lost interest in the game of conspiracy.
His old love of the sea came back more strongly than ever to Giuseppe,
and he begged his father to take him with him on his next cruise. His
mother thought he was too young to leave the Church school, but the boy,
already large and strong for his years, was growing very restless, and
there was no telling what mischief he might get into if he were kept at
home.
In the long evenings he was always asking his father to describe to him
the strange cities he had visited on his travels. He begged him
especially to tell him about Rome and her seven wonderful hills, the
city which from his earliest childhood had fascinated him more than any
other place in the world.
"Do you think I'll ever get to Rome, father?" Giuseppe would ask.
"Yes. We'll go there together some day before long, little son," his
father would answer.
So indeed they did. When Giuseppe was about fifteen years old he was
allowed to make his first long voyage on a brigantine bound from Nice to
Odessa, and a year later he sailed on his father's felucca to Rome. The
city of the Cæsars seemed even more wonderful than he had dreamed. It
was the heart of the world to him, and he never forgot the deep
impression that first sight of it made upon him.
After his first voyage the young Garibaldi sailed with many captains and
saw a great deal of the world, rounding Cape Horn, voyaging to the far
north, and even crossing the Atlantic and visiting South America. He was
always deeply interested in strange lands; he loved the thrill of any
adventure, and at the sight of an act of injustice or cruelty nothing
could keep him from going at once to the rescue.
When he was in South America he heard that the Italians were rising
against their foreign masters and were planning to fight for freedom. He
sailed for home instantly, and no sooner did he land than he was leading
a company of friends to join the Italian army. He was fearless,
generous, and as open-hearted as a child; wherever he went men flocked
to his command; within a few months the young man was virtually general
of an army, and fighting and winning battle after battle in the Alps. At
the end of a year his fame had crossed Europe.
The freedom of Italy, however, was not won in a single campaign.
Although Garibaldi's troops were victorious, some of the other Italian
armies were not, and before long that first war of independence came to
an end. For a time the Austrians' hold over the cities of Italy seemed
stronger than ever, and Garibaldi and many of his friends were forced to
leave their homes and seek refuge in other countries. Again Garibaldi
crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and this time he went to New York, and took
up the trade of candle-maker, living in a small frame house on Staten
Island. He liked Americans; they understood him and his burning desire
for Italian freedom better than any other foreigners he met.
He stayed on Staten Island until the chance came for him to go to sea
again as captain of a merchantman, and after that it was only a short
time before he was again in the Alps, his sword drawn, his devoted
volunteers behind him.
It was long before the dream of Italian patriots came true and Rome
became the capital of a united country, but during those years Garibaldi
led crusade after crusade. He wore the simple costume of an Italian
peasant, with a red shirt which was copied by all his men. This
red-shirted army swept the enemy out of Sicily and Naples, drove them
back through the Alps, won so continually that the superstitious
Neapolitans believed that their leader must be in league with the Evil
One. But the people of Italy worshiped this general beyond all their
other heroes.
Even their praises could not spoil the simplicity of Garibaldi's nature.
When his work was done he went home to live quietly with his family. The
friends of his boyhood found him very little changed, the same lover of
Italy and the sea, the same adventurous, generous spirit he had been as
a youth in Nice.
In those youthful days his boy friends had followed him without
question, now the whole of Italy looked to him as their leader; he had
succeeded in doing what hundreds of other men had dreamed of doing,
driving the Austrians permanently out of the peninsula, and restoring to
his countrymen the ancient liberty of Italy. Yet whether as a boy upon
the Mediterranean or as the liberator of a nation he was always the same
frank, straightforward, high-minded Giuseppe Garibaldi.
XIX
Abraham Lincoln
The Boy of the American Wilderness: 1809-1865
Squire Josiah Crawford was seated on the porch of his house in
Gentryville, Indiana, one spring afternoon when a small boy called to
see him. The Squire was a testy old man, not very fond of boys, and he
glanced up over his book, impatient and annoyed at the interruption.
"What do you want here?" he demanded.
The boy had pulled off his raccoon-skin cap, and stood holding it in his
hand while he eyed the old man.
"They say down at the store, sir," said the boy, "that you have a 'Life
of George Washington,' I'd like mighty well to read it."
The Squire peered closer at his visitor, surprised out of his annoyance
at the words. He looked over the boy, carefully examining his long, lank
figure, the tangled mass of black hair, his deep-set eyes, and large
mouth. He was evidently from some poor country family. His clothes were
home-made, and the trousers were shrunk until they barely reached below
his knees.
"What's your name, boy?" asked the Squire.
"Abe Lincoln, son of Tom Lincoln, down on Pidgeon Creek."
The Squire said to himself: "It must be that Tom Lincoln, who, folks
say, is a ne'er-do-well and moves from place to place every year because
he can't make his farm support him." Then he said, aloud, to the boy:
"What do you want with my 'Life of Washington'?"
"I've been learning about him at school, and I'd like to know more."
The old man studied the boy in silence for some moments; something about
the lad seemed to attract him. Finally he said: "Can I trust you to take
good care of the book if I lend it to you?"
"As good care," said the boy, "as if it was made of gold, if you'd only
please let me have it for a week."
His eyes were so eager that the old man could not withstand them. "Wait
here a minute," he said, and went into the house. When he returned he
brought the coveted volume with him, and handed it to the boy. "There it
is," said he: "I'm going to let you have it, but be sure it doesn't come
to harm down on Pidgeon Creek."
The boy, with the precious volume tucked tightly under his arm, went
down the single street of Gentryville with the joy of anticipation in
his face. He could hardly wait to open the book and plunge into it. He
stopped for a moment at the village store to buy some calico his
stepmother had ordered, and then struck into the road through the woods
that led to his home.
The house which he found at the end of his trail was a very primitive
one. The first home Tom Lincoln had built on the Creek when he moved
there from Kentucky had been merely a "pole-shack," four poles driven
into the ground with forked ends at the top, other poles laid crosswise
in the forks, and a roof of poles built on this square. There had been
no chimney, only an open place for a window, and another for a door, and
strips of bark and patches of clay to keep the rain out. The new house
was a little better, it had an attic, and the first floor was divided
into several rooms. It was very simple, however; in reality only a big
log-cabin.
The boy came out of the woods, crossed the clearing about the house, and
went in at the door. His stepmother was sitting at the window sewing. He
held up the volume for her to see. "I've got it!" he cried. "It's the
'Life of Washington,' and now I'm goin' to learn all about him." He had
barely time to put the book in the woman's hands before his father's
voice was heard calling him out-of-doors. There was work to be done on
the farm, and the rest of that afternoon Abe was kept busily employed,
and as soon as supper was finished his father set him to work mending
harness.
At dawn the next day the boy was up and out in the fields, the "Life of
Washington" in one pocket, the other pocket filled with corn dodgers.
Unfortunately he could not read and run a straight furrow. When it was
noontime he sat under a tree, munching the cakes, and plunged into the
first chapter of the book. For half an hour he read and ate, then he had
to go on with his work until sundown. When he got home he had his supper
standing up so that he could read the book by the candle that stood on
the shelf. After supper he lay in front of the fire, still reading, and
forgetting everything about him.
Gradually the fire burned out, the family went to bed, and young Abe was
obliged to go up to his room in the attic. He put the book on a ledge on
the wall close to the head of his bed so that nothing might happen to
it. During the night a violent storm arose, and the rain came through a
chink in the log walls. When the boy woke he found that the book was a
mass of wet paper, the type blurred, and the cover beyond repair. He was
heartbroken at the discovery. He could imagine how angry the old Squire
would be when he saw the state of the book. Nevertheless he determined
to go to Gentryville at the earliest opportunity and see what he could
do to make amends.
The next Sunday morning found a small boy standing on the Squire's porch
with the remains of the book in his hand. When the Squire learned what
had happened he spoke his mind freely. He told Abe that he was as
worthless as his father, that he did not know how to take care of
valuable property, and that he would never loan him another book as long
as he lived. The boy faced the music, and when the angry tirade was
over, said that he would like to shuck corn for the Squire, and in that
way pay him the value of the ruined volume. Mr. Crawford accepted the
offer and named a price far greater than any possible value of the book,
and Abe set to work, spending all his spare time in the next two weeks
shucking the corn and working as chore-boy. So he finally succeeded in
paying back the full value of the ruined "Life of Washington."
This was only one of many adventures that befell Abraham Lincoln while
he was trying to get an education. His mother had taught him to read and
write, and ever since he had learned he had longed for books to read.
One day he said to his cousin, Dennis Hanks, "Denny, the things I want
to know are in books. My best friend is the man who will get me one."
Dennis was very fond of his younger cousin, and as soon as he could save
up the money he went to town and bought a copy of "The Arabian Nights."
He gave this to Abe, and the latter at once started to read it aloud by
the wood-fire in the evenings. His mother, his sister Sally, and Dennis
were his audience. His father thought the reading only waste of time and
said, "Abe, your mother can't work with you pesterin' her like that,"
but Mrs. Lincoln said the stories helped her, and so the reading went
on. When he came to the story of how Sindbad the Sailor went too close
to the magic rock and lost all the nails out of the bottom of his boat,
Abe laughed until he cried.
Dennis, however, could not see the humor. "Why, Abe," said he, "that
yarn's just a lie."
"P'raps so," answered the small boy, "but if it is, it's a mighty good
lie."
As a matter of fact Abe had very few books. His earliest possessions
consisted of less than half-a-dozen volumes--a pioneer's library. First
of all was the Bible, a whole library in itself, containing every sort
of literature. Second was "Pilgrim's Progress," with its quaint
characters and vivid scenes told in simple English.
"Æsop's Fables" was a third, and introduced the log-cabin boy to a
wonderful range of characters--the gods of mythology, the different
classes of mankind, and every animal under the sun; and fourth was a
History of the United States, in which there was the charm of truth, and
from which Abe learned valuable lessons of patriotism.
He read these books over and over till he knew them by heart. He would
sit in the twilight and read a dictionary as long as he could see. He
could not afford to waste paper upon original compositions, and so he
would sit by the fire at night and cover the wooden shovel with essays
and arithmetical problems, which he would shave off and then begin
again.
The few books he was able to get made the keen-witted country boy
anxious to find people who could answer his questions for him. In those
days many men, clergymen, judges, and lawyers, rode on circuit, stopping
over night at any farmhouse they might happen upon. When such a man
would ride up to the Lincoln clearing he was usually met by a small boy
who would fire questions at him before he could dismount from his horse.