A Lost Love
From a red chalk drawing in the Collection of Mr. Thomas W. Lawson
Copyright, 1900, by John Elliott.
From a Copley Print. Copyright, 1901, by Curtis & Cameron, Publishers, Boston.
a rag-and-bottle man for an ancestor. Nena, who sells every conceivable bit of trash I give her, aids and abets me in these acts of insubordination. She was not in her usual spirits. I heard her scolding the little Jew boy who brought home an old terra-cotta cinerary urn we had bought in the morning from his mother Sora Giulia.
“What dirty robaccia do you bring into this clean house?” she demanded in her gruff sailor’s voice.
“Cosa ne so io? the signori bought it to-day. I heard my father say it once contained the ashes of a soldier of the Pretorian guard.”
“What guard?”
“Of the old time, a hundred years ago, maybe; they were like the carabinieri.”
Nena took the urn, grumbling under her breath, “Li mortacci tuoi (Your miserable dead)!”