When Garibaldi was twenty-one he was in command of a small schooner bound for the Black Sea on a trading expedition. The intent of the expedition was twofold: to sell the merchandise which the ship carried, and also if possible to capture certain bands of pirates that were infesting the dank, dark waters. It is perhaps quite needless to say that pirates are often men who are engaged in the laudable undertaking of protecting the shipping from pirates, just as admission to the bar is a sort of commercial letter of marque and reprisal.
That Garibaldi was a pirate, only his enemies said. But anyway, Garibaldi and a band of twenty boys, all younger than himself, sailed away to victory or to death.
It proved to be neither; for they were captured by pirates, who took their arms, provisions, merchandise, and even their compasses and clothing, leaving only their ship and the sky overhead and the water beneath.
Garibaldi took the capture as coolly as did Caesar under similar conditions, and talked poetry and philosophy with the pirates, and the gentlemen gave back a few provisions, with apologies and regrets for having troubled so fine a gentleman.
The next day, our friends, innocent of clothing, fell in with an English ship that ministered to their wants. Captain Taylor of the English ship was so impressed with the young captain that he wrote home about him, describing his courtesy, intelligence, and poetic fervor, all made manifest as Garibaldi stood on the deck of his schooner clad only in a doormat.
At this time Garibaldi had read the history of his country; in imagination he saw the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. And better still, he had figured out in his own mind why sleep and death, and moth and dust, and rust and ruin had settled down upon the race, and mankind had endured a thousand years of theological nightmare.
He knew that save in freedom alone does the intellect flower and blossom; that joy is the legal tender of the soul; that only through liberty can men progress and grow; and that great and beautiful work can be done only by a free and happy people.
The torch that fired his intellect was Mazzini, who was publishing a little periodical of protest that voiced what its editor felt, who wrote right out of his heart, and whose cry was, "Freedom and United Italy—an Italy free from the rule of the Pope."
Mazzini, the son of a doctor, expressed what many thought and felt, but dare not say. He had stated in no mincing phrase that the rule of the priest meant mental subjugation and a gradual, creeping, insidious return of the Dark Ages. He printed it on slips of paper and passed them out upon the street when but a youth in the High School.
Thereupon, Mazzini had been duly cautioned, and on repeating his offense his little folder of ideas was suppressed, and the precious fonts and presses thrown into the sea with the street-sweepings of the town.