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Show n f T r IN THE TIME OF BOCCACCIO. v 1 WHILE the plague was raging in Florence a party of ladies and gentlemen fled the danger, took up their abode in a beautiful suburban villa and passed the days in gallantry, music and story-telling. While their fellow-citizens were dying by thousands these pobb-' curantes regaled one another with a series of tales" most of whc were voluptuously immoral and many of which were revoltingly in? decent. Such is the ground work of Boccaccio's Decameron. We do things better nowadays. The counterparts of those men and women do not fly the Spanish influenza. Men and women of exactly the same station as those Florentines are now serving their fellow-citizens. The men are working at Red Cross headquarters ; the women are tending the sick. There was a private conscience about such matters mat-ters in Boccacco's day, but there is a public conscience as well in this age. The word "service" was much abused by doctrinaires imthe epoch before the war ; but the service of one's fellows is a duty all, oV nearly all, recognize in this period of stress. We do not live for ourselves our-selves alone, and we are happier for our altruism. The corporal works of mercy, to use a religious phrase, were never so widely performed per-formed as in this year of Our Lord 1918. Town -Talk. |