thought, to see other people go rushing out over the world to see everything, while you yourself were left dull at home! He remembered once himself being left with Martuccia in the still, deserted house when all the others had gone to the _festa_; how he thought the day would never end--and Martuccia thought so too. This made him sorry, very sorry, for the people who had lost their train. It did not occur to Nello that it might be no _festa_ he was going to, or they were going to. What could any one want more than the journey itself? If you wearied of seeing the trains rush past, and counting the houses, now on one side, now on another, there was the endless pleasure of dashing up to one station after another, where Nello could look down with fine superiority on the people who were not going, on the children above all, who looked up envious, and envied him, he felt sure. By and by, however, though he would not confess it to himself, the delights of the journey began to pall: his little eyes grew fatigued with looking, and his little mind with the continuous spectacle of those long, flying breadths of country; and even the stations lost their charm. He would have liked to have somebody to talk to, and cast one or two wistful glances to see whether Uncle Randolph was practicable, but found no encouragement in that countenance, pre-occupied, and somewhat lowering by nature, which appeared now and then in the wavering of the train, over the newspaper his uncle was reading. What a long time it took to read that paper! How it crackled when it was opened out! How tired Nello grew of seeing it opposite to him! And he began to grow cramped with sitting; his limbs wanted stretching, his mind wanted change; and he began to be hungry. Randolph, who scorned the poor refreshments of the railway, and thought it better to wait for his meal till he reached home, did not think of the difference between himself and the child. They travelled on and on through the dulness of the afternoon. Nello, who had been so excited, felt disposed to sleep, but was too proud to yield to it; and then he began to think of his sister and the home he had left. It is natural, it is selfish, to remember home when we miss its comforts: but if that is not of the higher nature of love, it is yet the religion of the weak, and not despised by the great Succourer who bids men call upon Him in time of trouble. Nello’s heart, when he began to feel tired and famished, recurred, with a pathetic trust in the tenderness and in the certainty of the well-being that abode there, to his home.