Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/188

160 who still recall everything, who fully understand all that they have lost. And these have, in addition, the grief of feeling their minds obscured, the dearest images grow a little more dim in their minds day by day, of feeling the persons whom they have loved the most die out of their memories. One of these boys said to me one day, with inexpressible sadness, ‘I should like to have my sight again, only for a moment, in order to see mamma's face once more, for I no longer remember it!’ And when their mothers come to see them, the boys place their hands on their faces; they feel from brow to chin, and to ears, to see how they are made. They can hardly persuade themselves that they cannot see her, and they call her by name many times, to beseech her that she will allow them, that she will make them see her just once.

“How many, even hard-hearted men, go away in tears! And when you go out, your case seems to you to be the exception, and the power to see people, houses, and the sky a hardly deserved privilege! Oh! there is not one of you, I am sure, who, on leaving, would not feel disposed to deprive himself of a portion of his own sight, in order to bestow a gleam at least upon all those poor children, for whom the sun has no light, for whom a mother has no face!”

Saturday, 25th.

Yesterday afternoon, on coming out of school, I went to pay a visit to my sick teacher. He made himself ill by overworking. Five hours of teaching a