As the days and weeks wore away, Dino constantly improved in mind and manners, and developed all the sweetness of heart and disposition that he promised on that November morning when he gave "his pennies for a home." At the end of five years he left the Home and sought a place where he could earn his own living.
Years passed and the memory of little Dino was fading out of the hearts of those who had befriended him, when the Sabbath stillness of a midsummer afternoon was broken by the sound of approaching footsteps, as the family sat on the broad piazza of a pleasant country house. A young gentleman was seen coming up the shady avenue, and the question went around, "Who can the stranger be?"
The bell rang and the message came: "Say to the lady, Dino would like to see her. I think she will remember the name."
As the lady approached—she of whom he had said on that dreary night in November, "Nobody love me, nobody smile on me but her"—she recognized the Italian eyes, and the old, sweet, musical accent with which she had been familiar years before.
With a graceful bow, he said, as if to assure himself of a welcome, "Madam, I should not have ventured in your presence if I had not been informed by my friends at the Home, upon whom I have called, that you would be glad to see me; for I felt that by my long silence I had forfeited all claim to your friendship."
Of course he was most cordially welcomed, and invited to tell the story of his long absence. He said, "I was earning an honest living in a grocer's establishment as job-boy after I left the Home, when the idea took possession of me that I must have more education, and I knew the only way I could get it was to go into the country and work for my board where I could go to school. I found a kind old farmer who gave me board and lodging for what I could do out of schoolhours on the farm, and here I remained for some years, Then came over me the old longing for music. I had kept the little music I knew during my stay at the farm, for I had led the Sabbath choir and the Sunday-school singing, and had never missed a Sabbath while I was there. But I longed for some knowledge of music. I felt that I could not live without it, and though the kind old farmer offered me good wages if I would remain with him, and a generous sum when I should become of age, I said, 'I cannot live without music,' and so I bade adieu to my pleasant home, and went to a city where I could hear music—my heart's great desire—and take lessons as soon as I could earn money enough to pay for them. I soon found occupation, and now I am earning an honest living." He then modestly added: "Perhaps, madam, you will be gratified to learn that I have never tasted intoxicating drink, nor spoken a profane word since I left the Home. I have never forgotten the first passages of Scripture I learned from the little Bible you gave me: 'There is not a word in my tongue but lo! O Lord, thou knowest it altogether.'"
The little Italian beggar now has a wife and a pretty little boy in a comfortable home of his own, and his testimony is, "If I had not been cared for and instructed in that Christian Home, I should be a beggar now as I was when I entered it."
"PANSY" BOOKS.
Probably no living author has exerted an influence upon the American people at large, at all comparable with Pansy's. Thousands upon thousands of families read her books every week, and the effect in the direction of right feeling, right thinking, and right living is incalculable.