Note 2 — THE DEAD MAN’S LETTER.1

There was also, about the same time, a poor man, who had hardly enough to keep body and soul together, and he went into a church to pray that he might have wherewithal to feed his children. So poor was he, that he said within himself, ‘None poorer than I can there be.’ As he said that, his eye lighted on the box where alms were gathered, that masses might be offered for the souls in Purgatory. ‘Yes,’ he said, then, ‘these are poorer than I,’ and he felt in his pocket for his single baiocco, and he put it in the alms box for the holy souls.2