The Last Lady of Mulberry: A Story of Italian New York

The Last Lady of Mulberry
A Story of Italian New York By Henry Wilton Thomas
Illustrated by Emil Pollak
New York D. Appleton and Company 1900
Copyright, 1900 By HENRY WILTON THOMAS All rights reserved
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE LAST LADY OF MULBERRY
All Armando knew of sculpture he had learned from his uncle Daniello, a mountain craftsman who never chiselled anything greater than a ten-inch Saint Peter. At night in the tavern on the craggy height, with a flask of barbera before him, the old carver would talk grandly of his doings in art, while his comrades, patient of the oft-told tale, nodded their heads in listless but loyal accord. They all knew very well that it was young Armando who did most of the carving, yet they cried “Bravo!” for old Daniello’s wine was good. And so it had been for a long time. While the lad chipped all day in a little workshop perched beyond the nether cloud shadows, his uncle passed the hours in Genoa, where, by sharp wits and bland tongue, he transmuted the marble into silver.
But Armando had a soul that looked far above the gleaming tonsures of ten-inch Saint Peters. Wherefore he was unhappy. When his twentieth birthday dawned it seemed to him that his life had been a failure. One morning, after a night of much barbera and noisy gasconade, old Daniello did not wake up, and two days afterward they laid him to rest in the sloping graveyard in the gorge by the olive-oil mill.
Gloomily Armando weighed the situation, standing by the mullioned window of the room wherein he had toiled so long and ignobly. Far in the western distance he could see the ships that seemed to glide with full sails across the mountains. The serene midsummer vapours, pendulous above the Mediterranean, were visible, but the sea upon which their shadows fell and lingered was hidden from his view by a thicket of silver firs. Southward the trees stood lower, and over their tops, where tired sea gulls circled, he gazed sadly toward the jumble of masonry that is Genoa.