After years of fighting, Garibaldi obtained a furlough, gathered a drove of cattle, and journeyed across Uruguay to Montevideo. There he was reduced to teach the rudiments of arithmetic in a private school, picking up whatever other precarious pennies he could, until civil war broke out in Uruguay, and he enlisted on the side of the people, struggling to free themselves from a blood-thirsty dictator. Garibaldi’s exploits as a guerrilla and corsair had made him famous, and now he repeated at Montevideo his amazing feats. From among his countrymen he organized an “Italian Legion,” which proved throughout a long service that Italians could and would fight,--two facts which scornful Europe was loth then to believe. He also illustrated his perfect disinterestedness by refusing all rewards beyond a bare means of subsistence. At a time when he held the fate of Montevideo in his hand, he had not money to buy candles to light the poor room where he and his family were dwelling. Thus, giving his utmost for liberty and the welfare of strangers, he saw the years pass without bringing the one thing he desired most of all,--the chance to consecrate himself to the redemption of Italy. That desire, the ruling passion of his life, had followed him everywhere. I marvel that any materialists exist; for where, in the material world, shall we find anything comparable to the tenacity of ideas? Think not to preserve them by locking them in an iron safe; write them not on stone, which crumbles, but on the human soul, and they shall be indestructible. Have we not daily proof that against remorse, love, hate, ambition, all the powers of the material world--fire or frost, hunger, disease, persecution--dash as harmless as vapor against adamant? By the moral precepts, by which Moses awed his people three thousand years ago, we are awed. They are permanent, being graven on something more durable than tables of stone; and it matters not how many times old Nile is renewed, or whether Sinai itself wear in dust away.