THE VENERABLE DON BOSCO
its great cities and its hillsides, prisons, workhouses, homes for feeble-minded children, reformatories for boys and girls. Enter those repellent precincts and look about you upon the hapless ones whom the world has walled in from social communion with their fellows—study those young faces especially, and compare them with happy faces you know and love and surround with all the sweetness earth can give. Then if you have courage and love equal to it, question them. Ask men, ask women, ask girls and boys: "What brought you here?"
I venture to say that one-half the answers in low, bitter, conclusive tones will be "Unkindness." Do this and I may well suppress my meagre yet awe-inspiring knowledge. Your life-long lesson will be learned—an appalling one—as it was learned by the young priest of Turin, just ordained, and sinking into the depths of his great, Christ-like heart, all on fire with the love of the Redeemer and His little ones, brought forth supernatural deeds that parallel and perhaps surpass all that history has recorded of the achievements of a single man—"a miraculous man," as one of his own saintly disciples delights in calling Don Bosco.
And, therefore, this great Apostle and Father of Youth would have none of it. Unkindness should be banished from his homes like a serpent. His children should be conducted through ways of gentleness and love, hand in hand with prayer
94
