I had never
even heard Mazzini's name, and after being told about him I was
inclined to grow argumentative, asserting that my father did not
know him, that he was not an American, and that I could not
understand why we should be expected to feel badly about him. It
is impossible to recall the conversation with the complete
breakdown of my cheap arguments, but in the end I obtained that
which I have ever regarded as a valuable possession, a sense of the
genuine relationship which may exist between men who share large
hopes and like desires, even though they differ in nationality,
language, and creed; that those things count for absolutely nothing
between groups of men who are trying to abolish slavery in America
or to throw off Hapsburg oppression in Italy. At any rate, I was
heartily ashamed of my meager notion of patriotism, and I came out
of the room exhilarated with the consciousness that impersonal and
international relations are actual facts and not mere phrases. I
was filled with pride that I knew a man who held converse with
great minds and who really sorrowed and rejoiced over happenings
across the sea. I never recall those early conversations with my
father, nor a score of others like them, but there comes into my
mind a line from Mrs. Browning in which a daughter describes her
relations with her father:--
"He wrapt me in his large
Man's doublet, careless did it fit or no.
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