Friday, 28th.
Yes, study comes hard to you, my dear Enrico, as your mother says: —
I do not yet see you set out for school with that resolute mind and that smiling face which I should like. —
You are still intractable. But listen; reflect a little! —
What a miserable, despicable thing your day would be if you did not go to school! —
At the end of a week you would beg with clasped hands that you might return there, for you would be eaten up with weariness and shame; —
disgusted with your sports and with your existence. Everybody, everybody studies now, my child. —
Think of the workmen who go to school in the evening after having toiled all the day; —
think of the women, of the girls of the people, who go to school on Sunday, after having worked all the week; —
of the soldiers who turn to their books and copy-books when they return exhausted from their drill! —
Think of the dumb and of the boys who are blind, but who study, nevertheless; —
and last of all, think of the prisoners, who also learn to read and write. —
Reflect in the morning, when you set out, that at that very moment, in your own city, thirty thousand other[17] boys are going like yourself, to shut themselves up in a room for three hours and study. —
Think of the innumerable boys who, at nearly this precise hour, are going to school in all countries. —
Behold them with your imagination, going, going, through the lanes of quiet villages; —
through the streets of the noisy towns, along the shores of rivers and lakes; —
here beneath a burning sun; there amid fogs, in boats, in countries which are intersected with canals; —
on horseback on the far-reaching plains; in sledges over the snow; through valleys and over hills; —
across forests and torrents, over the solitary paths of mountains; —
alone, in couples, in groups, in long files, all with their books under their arms, clad in a thousand ways, speaking a thousand tongues, from the most remote schools in Russia. —
Almost lost in the ice to the furthermost schools of Arabia, shaded by palm-trees, millions and millions, all going to learn the same things, in a hundred varied forms. —
Imagine this vast, vast throng of boys of a hundred races, this immense movement of which you form a part, and think, if this movement were to cease, humanity would fall back into barbarism; —
this movement is the progress, the hope, the glory of the world. —
Courage, then, little soldier of the immense army. —
Your books are your arms, your class is your squadron, the field of battle is the whole earth, and the victory is human civilization. —
Be not a cowardly soldier, my Enrico.
Thy Father.