"TEARS AND KISSES."
A writer in the Sabbath School Times tells a pathetic story of that language of signs which is common all over the world: "Two little Italians accompanied a man with a harp out of the city along the country roads, skirted by fields and woods, and here and there was a farmhouse by the way.
"He played and they sang at every door. Their voices were sweet, and the words in an unknown tongue.
"The old ladies came out of the door, and held their hands above their eyes to see what it all meant, and from behind them peered the flaxen heads of timid children.
"Not knowing how to make themselves understood, the little children, when they had finished singing, shyly held out their little brown hands or their aprons to get anything that might be given them and take it to the dark man out at the gate, who stood ready to receive it.
"One day the dark harpist went to sleep, and the little boy and girl, becoming tired of waiting for him, went off to a cottage under the hill an began to sing under the window.
"They sang as sweetly as the voices of birds. Presently the blinds were opened wide, and they saw by the window a fair lady on a sick bed regarding them.
"Her eyes shone with a feverish light, and the color of her cheeks was like a beautiful peach.
"She smiled, and asked them if their feet were tired. They said a few words softly in their own tongue.