"You see," Gagliano explained, "originally I paid for it only twenty dollars. But in the six years I worked for Signor Rinaldini, I have pawned it every Tuesday and redeemed it every Saturday so as to have it for Sunday, and the interest and the fixed charge of twenty-five cents, the usurer from the pawnshop forces me to pay, has brought up the cost of the guitar to way beyond a hundred dollars."
Gagliano's words iced the enthusiasm and admiration for Rinaldini. The poet lost his job. Rinaldini never received the coveted medal. Treasureship of many societies was withdrawn. In six months he was bankrupt. Gagliano died some months later.
WHY HER NAME IS MARGUERITE V. L. F. CLEMENT
Voila! Here is France—France in New York and the France of to-day. One could forgive the Boche all the crimes he has committed but the one that he has robbed the French of their gayety, of their lightness of heart. Dark gray has taken the place of happy rose and green. Sparkling eyes have been dulled and the gay ribbons pleated in the hair of women have disappeared. A small black band on the sleeve tells the reason why. One hears laughter no longer from the open windows and on the street.
Voila! American and Canadian soldiers pass on the street and are cheered. Little boys and girls shake their hands. A young woman drops her marketing bag, claps her hands and cries "Vive l'Amerique," to which one gallant boy in khaki answers with "Vive la France!" Windows and doors open. Women and children bend over the sills as much as they dare. A hundred, a thousand hands applaud, a hundred, a thousand voices cheer, from a dozen phonographs "The Marseillaise" is heard.
Voila! you are in New York, in the French quarter, on Eighth Avenue between Twenty-eighth and Thirty-sixth Streets.
In the evenings the neighborhood still gathers at Clement's. Papa Baviele still holds the floor, only he no longer tells the stories of the Commune, while Blanchard and Clero are discussing the merits of a Packard engine or of a Bleriot versus a Curtiss airplane.
The war is the topic and Clement speaks with authority, for he has been in it, in 1870.
"We would have beaten them then, only we had a sleepy Emperor and a coward or a traitor—in the end it amounts to the same—as a general."