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I have said that Don Bosco wrote over a hundred books—no one ever believed more devoutly than he in the apostolate of the press. The spoken word first, in season and out of season. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace!" was verified daily in his life, as well as in the lives of all his followers in the ways of St. Francis of Sales. But after that and the cares, spiritual and temporal, of his beloved family had been attended to, every leisure moment was given to writing or to thought and conversation preparatory to it.

Oliver Wendell Holmes was one day talking with a few friends and an enchanted hour slipped by in listening to his oracles of wisdom and experience drawn from the study of his fellow-men. One of his hearers said with regret: "Dr. Holmes, would that all you have said to us were in print, that it might benefit thousands!" "Perhaps it will be some day," answered the doctor laughing; "I have a way of roughing out my thoughts to my friends before they appear before the public eye." Don Bosco had a goodly share of that wisdom, so that his leisure hours of converse,