“‘Authentic,’” replies the mother at random, “is what really happens, and ‘Various’ is what the journalists invent to fill up the paper.”
“Oh! what story-tellers!”
“Well, then, you should be very careful always to tell the truth; if you don’t, you will go to Purgatory for seventy years, and in this world every one will take you for a journalist!”
Amid the infinitely varied ranks of youth there are many who, through innate depravity, and a fatally precocious hankering after political life, carry their reckless temerity so far as to read all the Parliamentary reports, from the first line to the last!
Let us say it once for all. When a boy gives himself up without restraint, and without shame, to the reading of the Parliamentary debates, it is all up with him! Good-bye to candour; good-bye to innocence, and the simple language of the age of infancy.
One day Cecco receives a maternal reprimand, because, with his customary negligence, he has omitted to wash his hands.
“I repudiate the malignant insinuation,” replies the culprit, immediately hiding the two inconvenient “documents” in the pockets of his knickerbockers.
Another day Gigino refuses to go to school unless his mother will give him the money to buy a cardboard Punch.
“Yes, dear,” says his mother; “go away to school, and I will buy you the Punch when you come home.”
