THE VENERABLE DON BOSCO
foundations—in Rome, England, Austria and Ecuador, S. A.;—large accessions of property; new structures for the various educational and charitable purposes of the Institute; thousands of children added to the holy and willing burden of Fathers and Sisters; marvelous extensions of the works, especially in South America, whence letters had often come bearing sublime testimony to the power of the Holy Spirit over souls in their primeval simplicity and ignorance; letters that cause the heart to beat with new fervor and the head to bow in confusion, seeing that after years of inundation of heavenly grace we have not so gazed upon the Divine Light and so felt the power of Divine Love as have the innocent catechumens of Tierra del Fuego and other uncivilized settlements. It is a wonderful story of progress, of sacrifice and of heroic perseverance, recorded with loving zeal year after year by the saintly Monsignor Fagnano and his colleagues and disciples in the pages of the Salesian Bulletin.
Don Bosco does not conceal from his faithful friends that his life is now hanging by a fragile thread, that this will be his last word of love and counsel. Recommending to their tutelary care the Oratory just begun in Rome, adjacent to the newly-consecrated Church of the Sacred Heart, he quotes the words of Leo XIII. "Devote yourselves to the completion of the Oratory already commenced, that we may have the consolation of saving many poor children by teaching them to be-
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