"Your mother?"

"Yes. My earliest memory is of being put out to nurse at a farmstead in

the Campagna. It was the time of revolution; the treasury of the Pope

was not yet replaced by the treasury of the King, the nuns at Santo

Spirito had no money with which to pay their pensions; and I was like a

child forsaken by its own, a fledgling in a foreign nest."

"Oh!"

"Those were the days when scoundrels established abroad traded in the

white slavery of poor Italian boys. They scoured the country, gathered

them up, put them in railway trucks like cattle, and despatched them to

foreign countries. My foster-parents parted with me for money, and I was

sent to London."

Roma's bosom was heaving, and tears were gathering in her eyes.

"My next memory is of living in a large half-empty house in Soho--fifty

foreign boys crowded together. The big ones were sent out into the

streets with an organ, the little ones with a squirrel or a cage of

white mice. We had a cup of tea and a piece of bread for breakfast, and

were forbidden to return home until we had earned our supper. Then--then

the winter days and nights in the cold northern climate, and the little

southern boys with their organs and squirrels, shivering and starving in

the darkness and the snow."

Roma's eyes were filling frankly, and she was allowing the tears to

flow.

"Thank God, I have another memory," he continued. "It is of a good man,

a saint among men, an Italian refugee, giving his life to the poor,

especially to the poor of his own people."

Roma's labouring breath seemed to be arrested at that moment.

"On several occasions he brought their masters to justice in the English

courts, until, finding they were watched, they gradually became less

cruel. He opened his house to the poor little fellows, and they came for

light and warmth between nine and ten at night, bringing their organs

with them. He taught them to read, and on Sunday evenings he talked to

them of the lives of the great men of their country. He is dead, but

his spirit is alive--alive in the souls he made to live."

Roma's eyes were blinded with the tears that sprang to them, and her

throat was choking, but she said: "What was he?"

"A doctor."

"What was his name?"

David Rossi passed his hand over the furrow in his forehead, and

answered: "They called him Joseph Roselli."




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