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The Venerable Don Bosco, as he lay dying in the Oratory of Valdocco on January 31, 1888, was the Father and Superior General of two hundred and fifty houses of the Salesian Society in all parts of the world. In these beneficent institutions one hundred and thirty thousand children were being educated and trained; and annually there went forth eighteen thousand finished apprentices ready to enter upon the career of life with self-reliance, fitted mentally and physically for their self-chosen art or trade, and—of deeper import to society—their characters moulded to the highest ideals of morality and religion.

During the marvelous years of development from that memorable December 8, 1841, on which Don Bosco, newly-ordained, had providentially met and saved the little waif, Bartholomew Garelli, he had given six thousand priests to the Church of God, learned, fervent and saintly apostles, of whom twelve hundred, faithful to the traditions of their childhood, had clung with filial love to their guardian and devoted themselves heart and soul to the heroic labors for the young which he had initiated in the Society of St.