Note: Translator Pauline Bancroft Flach died in 1966, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.
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AFTER THE MIRACLE
253
“A gentle worker of miracles has come among us,”
said another. “ He stands poor and unnoticed in the
bare old church, and his crown is of tin, and his
diamonds of glass. i Make no sacrifices to me, O ye
poor,’ he says; ’ build me no temple, all ye who
suffer. I will work for your happiness. If prosperity
shines from your houses, I shall shine with
precious stones; if want flees from the land, my feet
will be clothed in golden shoes embroidered with
pearls.’”
As each new verse was recited, it was accepted or
rejected. The blind men judged with great severity.
The next day they wandered out over Etna, and
sang the railway into the people’s hearts.
• ••••••••
After the miracle of Fra Felice’s legacy, people
began to give contributions to the railway. Donna
Micaela soon had collected about a hundred lire.
Then she and Donna Elisa made the journey to
Messina to look at the steam-tram that runs between
Messina and Pharo. They had no greater ambition ;
they would be satisfied with a steam-tram.
“Why does a railway need to be so expensive?”
said Donna Elisa. “It is just an ordinary road,
although people do lay down two steel rails on it.
It is the engineer and the fine gentlemen who make
a railway expensive. Don’t trouble yourself about
engineers, Micaela! Let our good road-builders,
Giovanni and Carmelo, build your railway.”
They carefully inspected the steam-tramway to
Pharo and brought back all the knowledge they
could. They measured how wide it ought to be
between the rails, and Donna Micaela drew on a
piece of paper the way the rails ran by one another
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