up some hill road. The situation had become so ridiculous that the "Powers" said in despair: "Very well, my friend! Your uncle says he can't have you, and you can't earn your own living yet; but you shall go and see for yourself!" And go he did, a little solemn now that it had come to his point-in specially bought yellow boots-he refused black-and a specially bought overcoat with sleeves-he refused a pèlerine, the arrogant civilian, as firmly as he had refused the military capote. For a week the hospital knew him not. Deep winter set in two days before he went, and the whole land was wrapped in snow. The huge, disconsolate crows seemed all the life left about the valley, and poplar trees against the rare blue sky were dowered with miraculous snow-blossoms, beautiful as any blossom of Spring. And still, in the winter sun, the town gossips sat on the bench under the wall, and the cross gleamed out, and the churchbell, riding high in its whitened ironwork, tolled almost every day for the passing of some wintered soul, and long processions, very black in the white street, followed it, followed it-home. Then came a telegram from Gray's uncle: "Impossible to keep Aristide (the name of the arrogant civilian), takes the evening train to-morrow. Albert Gray." So Jetsam was coming back! What would he be like now that his fixed idea had failed him? Well! He came at midday; thinner, more clay-colored in the face, with a bad cold; but he ate as heartily as ever, and at once asked to go to bed. At four o'clock a "Power," going up to see, found him sleeping like a child. He slept for twenty hours on end. No one liked to question him about his.time away; all that he had said and bitterly-was: "They wouldn't let me work!" But the second evening after his return there came a knock on the door of the little room where the "Powers" were sitting after supper, and there stood Gray, long and shadowy, holding onto the screen, smoothing his jaw-bone with the other hand, turning eyes like a child's from face to face, while his helpless lips smiled. One of the "Powers" said: "What do you want, my friend?"

"Je voudrais aller à Paris, voir ma petite fille."

"Yes, yes; after the war. Your petite fille is not in Paris, you know."

"Non?" The smile was gone; it was seen too plainly that Gray was not as he had been. The access of vigor, stirring of new strength, "improvement" had departed, but the beat of it, while there, must have broken him, as the beat of some too strong engine shatters a frail frame. His "improvement" had driven him to his own undoing. With the failure of his pilgrimage he had lost all hope, all "egoism."... It takes an eye, indeed, to tell salvation from damnation! was truly Jetsam now-terribly thin and ill and sad; and coughing. Yet he kept the independence of his spirit. In that bitter cold, nothing could prevent him stripping to the waist to wash, nothing could keep him lying in bed, or kill his sense of the proprieties. He would not wear his overcoat-it was invalidish; he would not wear his new yellow boots and keep his feet dry, except on Sundays; "Ils sont bons!" he would say. And before he would profane their goodness, his old worn-out shoes had to be reft from him. He would not admit that he was ill, that he was cold, that he was anything. But at night, a "Power" would be awakened by groans, and, hurrying to his room, find him huddled nose to knees, moaning. And now, every evening, as though craving escape from his own company, he would come to the little sitting-room, and stand with that deprecating smile, smoothing his jaw-bone, until some one said: "Sit down, my friend, and have some coffee." "Merci, ma sœur-il est bon, il est bon !" and down he would sit, and roll a cigarette with his long fingers, tapering as any artist's, while his eyes fixed themselves intently on anything that moved. But soon they would stray off to another world, and he would say thickly, fiercely: "Les Boches-ils vont en payer cher—les Boches!" On the walls were some trophies from the war of 'seventy. His eyes would gloat over them, and he would get up and finger a long pistol, or old papiermaché helmet. Never was a man who so lacked gêne-at home in any company; it inspired reverence, that independence of his, which had survived twenty months of imprisonment with those who, it is said, make their victims salute them—to such

a depth has their civilization reached. One night he tried to tell about the fright he had been given. The Boches-it seemed-had put him and two others against a wall, and shot those other two. Holding up two tapering fingers, he mumbled: "Assassins-assassins! Ils vont

en payer cher-les Boches!" But sometimes there was something almost beautiful in his face, as if his soul had rushed from behind his eyes, to answer some little kindness done to him, or greet some memory of the days before he was done forfoutu as he called it.

One day he admitted a pain about his heart; and time too, for at moments he would look like death itself. His nurse, Corporal Mignan, had long left his "deux phénomènes," having drifted away on the tides of the system, till he should break down again and drag through the hospitals once more. Gray had a room to himself now, the arrogant civilian's groaning at night disturbed the others. Yet, if you asked him in the morning if he had slept well, he answered invariably: "Oui oui ―toujours, toujours!" For, according to

P

REJUDICES die hard. Ideas soon become fixed. Only a great upheaval such as a war, or other stern ordeal, moves us to revise our preconceived notions and examine the truth of our premises. Nations at war, like men in their cups, are apt to reveal the whole truth. Shams, make-believes, sterile hypocrisies fall to earth, the traditional self fades into a dim background, and a nation stands forth naked, its true self.

Latent passions fanned to flame by war sear the soul and fuse inherited characteristics into new elements, so that the real temper of a people stands revealed, illumined by the fires that burn along its battle line.

So it is with Italy!

Most of us love Italy, few know her. Too few have troubled to study the recent development of this great and gifted race of men which has come to take up again the heritage of ancient Rome.

Now that we have departed from our century-old policy of isolation and have entered into close communion with the peoples of Europe, it would seem opportune to consider briefly the position of Italy in world affairs.

Of all the modern Europeans the Italians have hitherto been the least understood. To many of us Italy is still the land of orange-blossoms and blue skies, of museums and old masters, of hill towns and tenors, of beggars and bandits-the land of the far niente, where golden days

are passed in a flood of eternal springtide, where work is left until to-morrow, and nothing is done to-day. Even those of us who have spent some time in Italy outside of its art galleries and museums, are long in realizing the true temper of present-day Italy.

Why then this misunderstanding? The Italian people are plain-spoken. What they have accomplished during the past half-century speaks straightforwardly, eloquently.

What a galaxy of heroes mark the milestones of the struggles for Italian liberty and national unity! Mazzini at Rome, Manin at Venice blazed the trail. Then came Garibaldi, the warrior-champion of liberty, whose mighty blows forged the last links in the chain of Italian unity. In the background, guiding the new state through the treacherous waters of international intercourse, we discern the figure of Count Cavour, the master builder of Italian unity.

Italian unity meant Italian liberty. For, in order that Italy might become a united nation, the corrupt, despotic government of the Bourbon kings of the Two Sicilies had to be overthrown. Rome and the surrounding territory of the Patrimony of St. Peter had to be wrested from the grip of the Pope, who clung with desperate tenacity to his temporal sovereign rights. Tuscany was a duchy ruled by an Austrian princeling, as were the duchies of Parma and Modena, while Lombardy and Venetia, conquered provinces incorporated in the Hapsburg em