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 Rh there. With a stone for a hammer I drove in a nail. But the point of my nail piercing through a joint, the plaster gave way, as if it had been cream cheese, and a great hole was made.”

Of course through that hole the young man perceives the heroine, whom the good-natured and benignant uncle in good time receives into the family.

In this second manner Guerrazzi was original: Sterne’s Uncle Toby does not resemble Uncle Orazio, and Jean Paul’s aphorisms have not been borrowed from. Some of the piquancy and shrewdness of these masters of humour is lacking, but there is a compensating absence of that coarseness which sometimes escapes their pen.

Had Guerrazzi devoted his efforts to the writing of such stories his fame would probably be greater to-day, and Italy would be able to boast of at least one great humourist.