This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

THE VENERABLE DON BOSCO

that structures for schools and colleges arose almost by magic side by side with buildings and workshops for artisans. Large areas of land were given them for agricultural schools and farms.

The results were so astonishing—indeed, little short of miraculous—that Don Bosco with great willingness of heart sent almost annually new detachments of Salesians and Sisters of Mary, Help of Christians. Buenos Ayres became a mother-house—a rival of Turin—from which radiated new foundations on all sides. "Had there been a hundred, nay a thousand Salesians," says a historian, "they would not have been sufficient." Two novitiates were opened, one for priests and one for sisters; and while postulants with strong and beautiful vocations were hurrying to give themselves to God in religion, gifted and pious aspirants to the altar were multiplying and filling the Salesian seminaries erected at Montevideo and other cities.

102