A FOR Short Stories, Sketches, etc. ANNOUNCEMENT. CUT OUT THIS STAMP AND PASTE IT ON YOUR MANUSCRIPT. PRIZE of $50.00 will be paid for the best storywithout restriction as to theme, provided it be suitable for use in Short Stories-sent in competition before October 1st, 1895. Stories must not exceed 6,000 words in length and the rules given below should be closely followed. In addition to the story awarded the prize, the Editor will offer to purchase such other stories as seem to him available for use in Short Stories or Romance. Purchasers of Romance will also find attractive offers of special prizes in the August number of that magazine. RULES. All Competitors must cut out the "Competitor's Stamp" printed in the upper corner of this page of Short Stories and affix it to their MS. Address all communications to the editor of "Short Stories." All MSS. shall be legibly written and original. They shall be either upon the topic or in the vein indicated in these announcements, except when the subject is left to the discretion of competitors. No MS. will be considered eligible for any but the prize marked upon it. Postage on MSS. must be prepaid in full or the shortage will be deducted from stamps inclosed. The editor cannot engage in any correspondence regarding the merit of MSS. submitted. The Current Literature Publishing Co., 52 and 54 LAFAYETTE PLACE, NEW YORK. M RS. ONOFRIO stopped stirring the broth, pushed the pan in which it simmered back on a less heated part of the stove, and hurried into the next room. Remigio had sent up a piping note which, like a good Calabrian mother, Signora Onofrio at once translated as meaning that the young gentleman wanted the zizze. Remigio was just forty days old, but it was not this Lenten term that made him wail for milk. It was simply that he was hungry, and his jaws were not equipped for solids. His mother carried his diet right over her heart, which beat an accompaniment, lento e affetuoso, to Remigio's healthy draughts of nourishment. It may have been a pathetic picture, after a fashion, that of Mrs. Onofrio suckling her tiny son, but it was more comical than beautiful. Remigio had a look of condensed age about him, as * Written for Short Stories, and the winner of a prize in the series relating to foreign races of the American nation. Illustrations by Arthur I. Keller--Copyrighted. He was White if he had been blown in by the centuries. Nobody in the wide, wide world but his mother could have gone so far wrong as to think his plastic face anything but a pain to the eyes. swathed like a little mummy, or an Indian papoose. cloths and towels were wrapped closely around his small anatomy and were tightly tied. Only his large downy head and his crimson arms were free. Otherwise, Remigio was a rigid system. His small nose was flat against his face, his round eyes looked like glass marbles stuck in a piece of dough, and his mouth was so unnecessarily large that it really seemed clever in the little chap not to let anything escape from it at meal times. When one looked at Mrs. Onofrio it was evident that Remigio had every right to be a homely baby. Her coarse, black hair was brushed straight back and made her face, with the high cheek-bones and sallow skin, look more pinched and hard. There was a gaunt aspect to her eyes. Her lips, too, were thin and colorless. Yet, when Mrs. Onofrio smiled there was something as sweet and poetic in it as a bluebird in flight. After all, the soul is the best beautifier. Perhaps the loss of her first child may have had to do with the good woman's expression. He, too, had been Remigio, and when his mother called her second son by the same name, as if he were an encore of his too fleeting predecessor, she may possibly have felt that she was giving the new baby two Saint Remigios to look after him, and that one of them was his little, unknown brother. But the lot of the Onofrios after they were transplanted to New York was not a painful one. In fact, they had what must be considered a prosperous career for inhabitants of the poor "Dago" colony in that section of the town. They lived on the top floor of a flat-house in Crosby Street. It was owned by a syndicate of Hebrews. Callers on the Onofrios had to toil up six flights of grimy stone steps, each flight with as many joints in it as a yard-rule. The stairway was narrow and dirty and dark. On each sticky landing children swarmed like flies around the bunghole of a barrel of molasses. Right across from Mrs. Onofrio lived a tawny-headed Jewish lady whose personal contribution to the world's population was eight small Israelites, and she was by no means at the end of her tether yet. It made Mrs. Onofrio feel very insignificant with her one atomic, beswaddled Remigio. After one had forged upward through the several strata of tenement-house life, advent into the Onofrios' apartimento was rather cheering by contrast. There were three rooms. For it had a homely, neat, cosy air. At the right of the door the opened at once into the 18x12 kitchen. Against the middle of the opposite wall stood the stove. whole space was taken up by a sink with a permanent washtub, and a wooden table at which Mrs. Onofrio kneaded the dough for her bread. These were part of the room, and did not have to be supplied by lodgers. Against the left wall was a sewing machine, covered with a piece of brown calico. There were three wooden chairs and a campstool, and there was a cupboard with some cooking utensils in it and a few empty bottles on top of it. A clothes line stretched diagonally across one corner of the kitchen, on which hung some of the family's inner integuments. For so far were the Onofrios from washing their soiled linen in public that they even dried it in private. In thus drawing the drying beams from the sunshine the line of damp linen somewhat crippled it as an illuminating medium. But the poor have to use even sunlight as a necessity rather than a luxury. At the right, through the door, was visible the bedroom of Signor Onofrio and the good lady, his wife. It was a cheerful, airy room, forsooth, with a large iron bedstead, painted white. The patchwork quilt was in those gay colors which Italy loves, but fails to use quite as temperately as nature, and the pillows were large and square, or rather the pillow, for there was only one-excellent comment on the conjugal sympathy in which husband and wife dwelt. All the linen was scrupulously clean, and on the sheets and pillow-slips were the initials "C. O." in red thread. A kerosene lamp stood on the mantelpiece. There was even less furniture than in the smaller room. On the pa pered wall hung a small colored print of San Gennajo, representing that dear man when his blood was liquid all the time, and was kept in his veins instead of in a phial. On the other side of the kitchen was a much smaller, much darker room. It had hardly anything in it but a bed. A few simple dresses hung upon the wall and a very modest trunk stood on the floor. Even on a sunny day the light strained into this room but meagerly. Yet, here was where Rosella slept, and Rosella was a flower, the sweetest, purest, dearest Italian girl in New York. She was Mrs. Onofrio's sister; but Rosella-ah! she was a pretty girl. Large, limpid, innocent eyes with long lashes to them, and her eyebrows set high and delicate in their lines, while her complexion was a clear, warm olive. She was seven teen, and used to sing in the little Italian Church at the head of Elizabeth Street, la Chiesa della Madonna di Loreto. Her voice was not very cultivated, but it was full of nature's sympathetic fullness. When she arched her eyebrows pathetically, as she sung the Et Incarnatus est or the O Salutaris Hostia, there was a thrill in her tones that made the people in the church pray better. It winged their Aves with a swifter flight to Heaven. He got three Something must be said about Signor Onofrio. He had come to America a year before his wife, and at the end of that time had saved enough money to bring her over. He was a good little chap. In fact, the quartette in that small nest at the top of the Crosby Street tenement-house were so good as to be almost uninteresting. In the ratio of virtue, Signor and Signora Onofrio were the mean between Remigio, who was only negatively good, of course, considering his forty days, and Rosella, who was good to the verge of sanctity. Everybody regarded her as almost a little saint, and the family felt that she drew down a blessing on them. There wasn't a stiletto in the whole crowd. The nearest approach to it was a pair of shears. For Giuseppe, who was called "Jo" in the shop, was a cutter. dollars a day, but it was a good long day. His "boss" was a Hebrew gentleman. Although these wages were far superior to anything Giuseppe could command in Italy, and especially in cold, bleak Calabria, yet living expenses were more, too. But they were a thrifty pair. His employer used to allow "Jo" a quarter for his dinner. But, astute economist, he waited till he got home for that meal, and so put his quarter into his pocket instead of into his stomach. He got up at six and worked until nine in the evening, snipping and clicking merrily with his shears in a stuffy room with the close smell of cloth in it. But the dream of the Onofrios was to save up enough money to go back to Italy one day and buy a place of their own. Yes! they hoped some time to have their own vine and fig-tree on the "suol beato," and die in Italian sunshine. This is really a great deal about an Italian journeyman-cutter and his homely wife and his wizened scrap of a baby. But they had the same kind of souls as the millionaires, and though they did not live as high up in the town, they were closer neighbors to God than many of these rich people, and were quite as happy. Compensation always tags after every human lot. It is the forefinger of Providence keeping the balance in the world. At all events, after these remarks you can picture Signora |