JANUARY 10

Often Don Bosco would be seen walking up and down surrounded by a large crowd of clerics and boys. Some would be following him, but the greater part would be preceding him, walking backwards in order to hear better what he was saying. Don Bosco with his lively conversation would entertain them now with an example now with some adventure which had befallen him, now with the struggle of the Oratory in the beginning, all of which would produce a salutary effect on them. 

"Together with many of my companions I can assure you" -Don Rua would affirm -"that one conversation of Don Bosco was as good, nay worth more than a spiritual retreat. Sometimes at the end of his conversation or narration, he used to give us various books and works written by himself especially those against the Protestants in order to preserve us from their snares and errors.” 

On summer evenings when the feast day recreations were a little longer than usual, the games used to become lifeless on account of the tiredness of the boys. Don Bosco would then go to the playground and sit on the ground with his back against the wall. As soon as the boys saw him, they would run and sit down around him forming seven large semi circles of happy faces, all intent on him. A distinguished lawyer thus expressed himself on once witnessing this spectacle which was reproduced time and again from 1850 to 1866: 

"They were the living and speaking figures of the most pure, modest and cheerful innocence. Their eyes as wide open as windows. They had nothing to hide. In those innocent souls there was no room for a bad thought. They would candidly look into the face of anyone they met, communicating to all that serene peace which never decreased in their beautiful souls. As for the boys themselves, it was indeed a most pleasing sight to them to be able to gaze upon their loving father Don Bosco." 

Fr. Emilius Sacco, parish priest of the Church of St. Stephen at Pallenza, and an old boy of the Oratory, wrote to Don Rua in 1888 "0 Don Bosco! How dear he was to us! How virtuous and holy! I still seem to see him smiling on me, to hear his sweet words and admire his amiable countenance on which was imprinted the beauty of his soul." 

Don Bosco used to reserve his most pleasing conversations for these little gatherings in the open air. At times he would narrate in his own style the dialogue of Gaspare Gozzi between an inkstand and a lamp. At other times he would invent one between a pen and an inkstand; between a cobbler and a broken shoe, which did not want to be mended on a Sunday but on a Monday. Or he would invent an argument supposed to have taken place between him and his lamp which did not want to give light because it sided with the Protestants. At other times he would recite difficult sonnets, one particularly being remembered "on the blade of my penknife" being written by himself as a cleric. 

Sometimes he would narrate wonderful fables which would stir the imagination of his hearers. He would describe the great Gargantuan and all the wonderful adventures which befell it in the field of the impossible. Afterwards he would describe its the death and burial at which thousands of people were present. But they could not succeed in covering him completely with earth, although they made a very deep grave one kilometer long. He

would conclude "his nose is still uncovered. You can still see him even today." 

- "Can it still be seen?" all the boys would cry in surprise. "Yes, look at it. It is now known as Mont Blanc!"