His good work had found friends and supporters from the beginning, and being brought to the notice of Pius VI, the pontiff bought the Palazzo Ruggia as a permanent home for it, and constituted himself its chief protector. Thus encouraged, Tata Giovanni started on a crusade which had for its object nothing less than the reclamation of all the good-for-nothing boys in Rome! He used to seek them out and follow them up, and if persuasion proved unavailing the dogged old man would seize them by the arm and march them off to his “Asilo” without more ado. Vagrancy, mendicancy, gambling roused his ire to such an extent that his name became a terror to all youthful evil-doers, and they would fly at the mere mention of it. Life at the Asilo was conducted on lines of military precision. The youngsters rose early, heard Mass, got a good breakfast, and marched away to their work, where, as I have said, their guardian looked in on some of them—and they never knew which it would be—during the course of the day. When the Ave Maria rang they all came home, and as they passed into the house, Tata Giovanni stood at the door with a bag in his hand, and into this they had to drop their earnings—not a baiocco was to be spent on the way or kept back! Then came the lessons, followed by the rosary, and supper, this last the crown of the day for the tired, healthy young people. The old ideals still found many followers in those days, and it was not at all unusual to see some great Cardinal “gird himself with a towel” and trot humbly a score of times between the kitchen and the refectory to wait on the boys. There were a hundred of them by this time, and great was Daddy John’s preoccupation as to their morals. Long inured to shortening his hours of sleep, he would pace the dormitories all night long to see that all was as it should be, only sleeping himself for a short hour in the morning; and certainly Heaven blessed his efforts, for as years went on, and his waifs grew old enough to go out into the world on their own account and others took their places, not one that I ever heard of brought discredit on his education.