Page:De Amicis - Heart, translation Hapgood, 1922.djvu/344



June 3d.

To-morrow is the National Festival Day.

T is a day of national mourning. Garibaldi died last night. Do you know who he is? He is the man who freed 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 saved a drowning youth, at Marseilles; at forty-one, he saved a ship from burning on the ocean. He fought for ten years in America for the liberty of a foreign 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 liberated Naples and Palermo in 1860; he fought again for Rome in 1867; and fought against 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 thirtyseven of them.

When he was not fighting, he was working 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 people, he protected all the weak; he had no other aspiration than