I have no happy recollection of my Reggian
meals.
An interesting feature of the streets is the frequency of carved
inscriptions, commemorating citizens who died in their struggle for
liberty. Amid quiet by-ways, for instance, I discovered a tablet
with the name of a young soldier who fell at that spot, fighting
against the Bourbon, in 1860: "_offerse per l'unita della patria sua
vita quadrilustre_." The very insignificance of this young life
makes the fact more touching; one thinks of the unnumbered lives
sacrificed upon this soil, age after age, to the wild-beast instinct
of mankind, and how pathetic the attempt to preserve the memory of
one boy, so soon to become a meaningless name! His own voice seems
to plead with us for a regretful thought, to speak from the stone in
sad arraignment of tyranny and bloodshed. A voice which has no
accent of hope. In the days to come, as through all time that is
past, man will lord it over his fellow, and earth will be stained
red from veins of young and old. That sweet and sounding name of
_patria_ becomes an illusion and a curse; linked with the
pretentious modernism, _civilization_, it serves as plea to the
latter-day barbarian, ravening and reckless under his civil garb.
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