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

THE APOSTLE OF YOUTH

Francis of Sales as Co-operators, or we should not see these religious priests, destined for such extensive, boy-saving enterprises, scattered, as they are, in a few parishes, without even a novitiate to shelter aspirants to the Saint-forming rule of Don Bosco: without a House of Studies, where their youthful clerics may pursue amid the quiet scenes of nature their final course of philosophy and theology, urged on daily more and more to the attainment of heroic virtue by the holy examples of their predecessors.

This is "a consummation devoutly to be wished!" Can we not compass it for the glory of God and for the coming generation? so shall the Sons of Don Bosco train their thousands of "Knights of Christ" and upright citizens of our great Republic.

Many earnest applications are made to the Salesian Fathers for foundations in the United States and if the personnel were not wanting, few of our large cities would be without a Don Bosco Institute. My readers will appreciate a personal letter which speaks with a power of which I am incapable:

"Continue, therefore, in your apostolic task, spread might and main, the knowledge of Don Bosco's life; let the American public open their eyes to this wonderful pedagogue, writer, preacher, missioner, statesman, miracle-worker of the nineteenth century. Let the people living in these irreligious days, see what a poor, helpless priest accomplished with the help of the Most High, and

193