Cuore (Heart), Edmondo De Amicis [best books to read ever .txt] 📗

BY

EDMONDO DE AMICIS

TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRTY-NINTH ITALIAN EDITION
BY
ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1887, 1895 and 1901.
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY

Copyright, 1915.
By ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

Printed in the United States of America

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

This book is specially dedicated to the boys of the elementary schools between the ages of nine and thirteen years, and might be entitled: “The Story of a Scholastic Year written by a Pupil of the Third Class of an Italian Municipal School.” In saying written by a pupil of the third class, I do not mean to say that it was written by him exactly as it is printed. He noted day by day in a copy-book, as well as he knew how, what he had seen, felt, thought in the school and outside the school; his father at the end of the year wrote these pages on those notes, taking care not to alter the thought, and preserving, when it was possible, the words of his son. Four years later the boy, being then in the lyceum, read over the MSS. and added something of his own, drawing on his memories, still fresh, of persons and of things.

Now read this book, boys; I hope that you will be pleased with it, and that it may do you good.

Edmondo De Amicis.

CONTENTS. OCTOBER. PAGE The First Day of School 1 Our Master 3 An Accident 5 The Calabrian Boy 6 My Comrades 8 A Generous Deed 10 My Schoolmistress of the Upper First 12 In an Attic 14 The School 16 The Little Patriot of Padua 17 The Chimney-Sweep 20 The Day of the Dead 22 NOVEMBER. My Friend Garrone 24 The Charcoal-Man and the Gentleman 26 My Brother’s Schoolmistress 28 My Mother 30 My Companion Coretti 31 The Head-Master 35 The Soldiers 38 Nelli’s Protector 40 The Head of the Class 42 The Little Vidette of Lombardy 44 The Poor 50 DECEMBER. The Trader 52 Vanity 54 The First Snow-Storm 56 The Little Mason 58 A Snowball 61 The Mistresses 62 In the House of the Wounded Man 64 The Little Florentine Scribe 66 Will 75 Gratitude 77 JANUARY. The Assistant Master 79 Stardi’s Library 81 The Son of the Blacksmith-Ironmonger 83 A Fine Visit 85 The Funeral of Vittorio Emanuele 87 Franti Expelled from School 89 The Sardinian Drummer-Boy 91 The Love of Country 100 Envy 102 Franti’s Mother 104 Hope 105 FEBRUARY. A Medal Well Bestowed 108 Good Resolutions 110 The Engine 112 Pride 114 The Wounds of Labor 116 The Prisoner 118 Daddy’s Nurse 122 The Workshop 132 The Little Harlequin 135 The Last Day of the Carnival 139 The Blind Boys 142 The Sick Master 149 The Street 151 MARCH. The Evening Schools 154 The Fight 156 The Boys’ Parents 158 Number 78 160 A Little Dead Boy 163 The Eve of the Fourteenth of March 164 The Distribution of Prizes 166 Strife 172 My Sister 174 Blood of Romagna 176 The Little Mason on His Sick-Bed 184 Count Cavour 187 APRIL. Spring 189 King Umberto 191 The Infant Asylum 196 Gymnastics 201 My Father’s Teacher 204 Convalescence 215 Friends Among the Workingmen 217 Garrone’s Mother 219 Giuseppe Mazzini 221 Civic Valor 223 MAY. Children with the Rickets 229 Sacrifice 231 The Fire 233 From the Apennines to the Andes 237 Summer 276 Poetry 278 The Deaf-Mute 280 JUNE. Garibaldi 290 The Army 291 Italy 293 Thirty-Two Degrees 295 My Father 297 In the Country 298 The Distribution of Prizes to the Workingmen 302 My Dead Schoolmistress 305 Thanks 308 Shipwreck 309 JULY. The Last Page from my Mother 317 The Examinations 318 The Last Examination 321 Farewell 323 CUORE.

AN ITALIAN SCHOOLBOY’S JOURNAL.

OCTOBER. FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL.

Monday, 17th.

To-day is the first day of school. These three months of vacation in the country have passed like a dream. This morning my mother conducted me to the Baretti schoolhouse to have me enter for the third elementary course: I was thinking of the country and went unwillingly. All the streets were swarming with boys: the two book-shops were thronged with fathers and mothers who were purchasing bags, portfolios, and copy-books, and in front of the school so many people had collected, that the beadle and the policeman found it difficult to keep the entrance disencumbered. Near the door, I felt myself touched on the shoulder: it was my master of the second class, cheerful, as usual, and with his red hair ruffled, and he said to me:—

“So we are separated forever, Enrico?”

I knew it perfectly well, yet these words pained me. We made our way in with difficulty. Ladies, gentlemen, women of the people, workmen, officials, nuns, servants, all leading boys with one hand, and holding the promotion books in the other, filled the anteroom and the stairs, making such a buzzing, that it seemed as though one were entering a theatre. I beheld again with pleasure that large room on the ground floor, with the doors leading to the seven classes, where I had passed nearly every day for three years. There was a throng; the teachers were going and coming. My schoolmistress of the first upper class greeted me from the door of the class-room, and said:—

“Enrico, you are going to the floor above this year. I shall never see you pass by any more!” and she gazed sadly at me. The director was surrounded by women in distress because there was no room for their sons, and it struck me that his beard was a little whiter than it had been last year. I found the boys had grown taller and stouter. On the ground floor, where the divisions had already been made, there were little children of the first and lowest section, who did not want to enter the class-rooms, and who resisted like donkeys: it was necessary to drag them in by force, and some escaped from the benches; others, when they saw their parents depart, began to cry, and the parents had to go back and comfort and reprimand them, and the teachers were in despair.

My little brother was placed in the class of Mistress Delcati: I was put with Master Perboni, up stairs on the first floor. At ten o’clock we were all in our classes: fifty-four of us; only fifteen or sixteen of my companions of the second class, among them, Derossi, the one who always gets the first prize. The school seemed to me so small and gloomy when I thought of the woods and the mountains where I had passed the summer! I thought again, too, of my master in the second class, who was so good, and who always smiled at us, and was so small that he seemed to be one of us, and I grieved that I should no longer see him there, with his tumbled red hair. Our teacher is tall; he has no beard; his hair is gray and long; and he has a perpendicular wrinkle on his forehead: he has a big voice, and he looks at us fixedly, one after the other, as though he were reading our inmost thoughts; and he never smiles. I said to myself: “This is my first day. There are nine months more. What toil, what monthly examinations, what fatigue!” I really needed to see my mother when I came out, and I ran to kiss her hand. She said to me:—

“Courage, Enrico! we will study together.” And I returned home content. But I no longer have my master, with his kind, merry smile, and school does not seem pleasant to me as it did before.

OUR MASTER.

Tuesday, 18th.

My new teacher pleases me also, since this morning. While we were coming in, and when he was already seated at his post, some one of his scholars of last year every now and then peeped in at the door to salute him; they would present themselves and greet him:—

“Good morning, Signor Teacher!” “Good morning, Signor Perboni!” Some entered, touched his hand, and ran away. It was evident that they liked him, and would have liked to return to him. He responded, “Good morning,” and shook the hands which were extended to him, but he looked at no one; at every greeting his smile remained serious, with that perpendicular wrinkle on his brow, with his face turned towards the window, and staring at the roof of the house opposite; and instead of being cheered by these greetings, he seemed to suffer from them. Then he surveyed us attentively, one after the other. While he was dictating, he descended and walked among the benches, and, catching sight of a boy whose face was all red with little pimples, he stopped dictating, took the lad’s face between his hands and examined it; then he asked him what was the matter with him, and laid his hand on his forehead, to feel if it was hot. Meanwhile, a