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Show menced a romance, in the plot of which his daughter was very much interested. One morning, after much preambling and hesitation, she- said: 'Ah, how proud I should be if this book cotdd be finished finish-ed and dedicated to me on my wedding day! What a fine present that would bel' 'We will see,' replied her father, and h really had the intention of gratifying her. But, as the time approached tho author's rein diminished, his disobedient fancy refused him colors and figures; h could not banish his daughter from his study, and yet he could not see her sitting sit-ting there, her head bent over the paper, without thinking of something very difEerent from his romance.," . "Oh, poor papa!" exclaimed Emilia, rising and throwing herself into hij arms. But he gently disengaged her, and, controlling his own emotion, begged her to take her place agaiil, and went on with his story. i - -' 1 . ' ' " "Thus, when only two months were lacking of the time fixed for the marriage, mar-riage, he had finished but half of the work, and when but two weeks remained remain-ed he had scarcely accomplished' two-thirds two-thirds of the whale. It was tlien seen to be impossible to publish it on' the wedding wed-ding day; nevertheless, Emilia"-? "There; you have nt last called her by her right name." "Emilia continued to come every morning morn-ing to the study, and to write the periods and phrases that dropped laboriously from the exhausted imagination of the romancer." "Exhausted? Ifcn't say that papa. There nro some beautiful pages iayoox book." "You aro not nn impartial judge, carina." ca-rina." " of the romance; however, the dictator dic-tator was often interrupted. Fatherand daughter would look nt each other tenderly; ten-derly; take each other by the hand, as if going over again the long years passed in faithful commnnality of thought; and without saying so openly, seemed to thank each other for the good mutually done in the past, and to beg forgiveness for what might havo been amiss. "The wedding day was set for Monday, the tlu'rd Monday in May, and the young man went on the preceding Saturday to bring his aged mother to the marriage, He was to arrive by the noon train, and the ceremony was to take place at 8 o'clock. On that morning, the lait morning, the author went down, as n. ual, to his study; but ho certainly did not expect to see his daughter appear before him there. Judge of his pleasure and astonishment when before the bell stopped striking the hour she came into the room, her face more beautiful than ever, for the delicate pallor that flitted across it. To his expression of surprise she answered, 'I want to be your secre tary today, also,' and seated herself in the accustomed place before the half fin. ished Sheet of the day before. "But at that moment the author scarcely scarce-ly remembered of having a romance to write. The characters and situations of his personages were quite indifferent to him. He thought of the romance of his own life, of which the most beautiful chapter was just ending, and instead of dictating to her ho would rather take his daughter on Ms knee, to tell her again the stories of her babyhood, at the samo time pushing back the clustering brown curls that shadowed her forehead. fore-head. He would rather have told her all he had in his heart, would rather have ex mssoA all the fond wishes which would follow her away from the threshold thresh-old of home, all the hopes that he cherished cher-ished for her happiness, and that of her companion. But who knows when he would have finished if he had commenced in that way. He remembered, instead, that he had promised her something for a wedding present, which it was now impossible to ffive her. "A strange idea struck him, and taking fresh paper, he dictated a lot of foolish things that passed through his mind. "It struck 9 o'clock. Emilia made an involuntary movement. . Her father understood un-derstood tliat it was time to close. "Then when it struck 9 and he saw the girl uneasy in her seat "That is not so." "Yes, indeed it is." "He leaned over the mamncript and dded with his own hand: "What then, papa?" "Give me the pen." "To my daughter o:i ker wedding day, "Giorgio Tasseri." "Oh, babbo, caro babbo, how good you are!" cried Emilia, escaping from the chair. "This time you will let me kiss you." "Without doubt," replied he, giving her two sonorous kisses. "But now go and dress yourself and make yourself beautiful for hita." "She ran to the door as if her feet were winged, but suddenly turned back quite ashamed. She had forgotten to take the manuscript! But fortunately her father had. not noticed it. He had turned again to the window, and was gazing out into the garden, where the nightingales, concealed con-cealed among the leaves, were trilling their songs of love." Translated for Chicago Chi-cago Evening Horald from the Italian of Enrico Castlenuovo by Annette Crocker. ing the difficulty of keeping from his daughters eyes the things that issued from his pen took greater care to give to his thoughts a pure and chaste direction. He did not, indeed, always picture life in roseato hues, but he took no pleasure in representing human brutality, and when, in faithfulness to his art, he could not entirely conceal it, he did his best to picture it in such a way as would least offend the sensibilities of his first reader. Little by little there grew up another bond of union between father and daughter. daugh-ter. He was a very bad penman and his writing was the despair of printers; but she wrote a plain hand which could be read at first sight by a child. "The father, selfishly, perhaps, gradually gradu-ally came to take advantage of this fact. He had her write under hie dictation, first a little, then more and more until she finally became his secretary altogether. alto-gether. "In the meantime the years were passing pass-ing by and the little girl became a young woman, and the young woman was as beautiful as one could desire." "Oh, papa!" "Silence!" "So that even the street people turned to look at her. She still declared that she would always stay with her babbo, but she did not say it with the same emphasis em-phasis as before, and when he replied that she must submit to the common law she sighed and shook her head, but did not fly into a rage. "There was very little company ever in the house, but once in a while some ono would drop in of an evening, or como L dine, and tho young girl always performed per-formed with much grace these occasional duties of hospitality. Now it happened that among these few guests was a young man, an assistant to a professor of mathematics, mathe-matics, who, whether it was on account of the cooking or of the young mistress, showed so much pleasure at having been invited to dinner one day that he was hospitably urged to come again, and so on, ad infinitum. "Between the dinners and thefollowing visits, which were called visits of digestion, diges-tion, the fellow was always under foot. The author, short sighted and stupid, as are all others of his kind, never noticed anything going on; but the young girl began to be absent minded, to answer at random, and to make the most dreadful mistakes in writing in fact, one morning morn-ing she actually wrote caro with an h." "Oh! how you remember everything!" said Emilia, laughing. "Finally the simple minded man of a father suspected something and questioned ques-tioned his daughter on the subject. "She, after dodging the point for a while, broke out into a torrent' of tears and confessed that she did not seem the same any longer, and that for some time she bad been possessed of a vague unrest un-rest which she did not understand. "Ahime! After cai-eful inquiry it was found out that the beginning of her uneasiness un-easiness dated from the Wednesday when the young assistant of mathematics mathemat-ics was invited to dine with them. The innocent child feigned great surprise sur-prise at this discovery, declared that the assistant of mathematics was unendurable un-endurable to her; that she did not want to see him again, and in conclusion conclu-sion she threw herself weeping upon her father's neck and begged him to take her far, far away to some place where there could not possibly be any assistant mathematicians. "Signor Puntini, as we have already laid, was not very sharp about some tilings, but the facts were so plain as not to bo misunderstood by a man of even imall intelligence. "The time so much dreaded hal come it last, when the girl, forgctiul of hei solemn promises, was preparing to take her flight from the home nest. "While the good man was still agitated by these thoughts he received a most respectful letter from the young assistant, assist-ant, in which tlie latter declared I' lself violently in love v.it'.i the young lady, vowed that he ci not live without her, and was an. .. -us to marry her. What was to be done?- The young man was of good family, had fine qualities of mind and heart" "Yes, indeed!" "No remarks, if you please." "Was not without money, and besides, be-sides, if ho was in love with the girl she was also in love with him. "When the father asked the daughter what answer she would make if the young man asked her hand in marriage she turned all colors and replied that it was not possible, and that it was useless to talk about anything bo unlikely to happen; but if it were bo ah, if it were so! and then by force of that blessed habit which . women have of melting into tears she began to sob and cry. Things having come to this point, it is easy to understand how, in a short time, the author's daughter and the young assistant of mathematios became pro-messi pro-messi sposi. "It would certainly be doing violence to the truth not to say that in giving' his consent Signor Puntini felt a spasm . of the heart. He was then to be alone, without the dear and faithful companionship compan-ionship of her who, for nearly twenty years, had scarcely left him for an instant. in-stant. What silence, what sadness there would be in the house after her departure! depart-ure! And perhaps his sorrow, too plainly seen in his face, had cast a shadow over his daughter's happiness. He knew, indeed, in-deed, that it was useless to rebel against the law of nature, and that he must re- A WEDDING PRESENT. One morning in May Giorgio Passeri, the celebrated author, whose greatest Work had furnished the subject for one of the finest paintings of the present day, was walking thoughtfully up and down in his study, stopping now and Ithen before one or the other of the open windows which looked out upon a spacious spa-cious garden. The room, which was light and airy, "Was not remarkable in any way. There (were book shelves all around, a few ichairs here and there and books and pa-pers pa-pers scattered about in great disorder tthat sort of literary disorder which prevails pre-vails almost without exception in the irooms of those who aro devoted to intellectual intel-lectual work. As the village church bell rang for 8 (o'clock he turned instinctively toward tthe door, then shook his head with a eigh, and going to the table he began to tmf old some manuscripts. But before (the bell had finished ringing the door opened and a young girl of perhaps 20 jyears, graceful in figure and with brown Sbair and eyes, entered the room. ; "Good morning, papa." ,He who, at her appearance, could not leonceal bis emotion, kissed her on the (forehead and exclaimed: "Today also?" "Today more than ever," she replied. 'And with a shade of sadness in her Toice she added: : "Is not this the last day?" j "Do you really want to?" ! "Yes," replied the girl tenderly. 1 ""1 want to be your secretary today, also.. . Of course we cannot finish the fcook, but we can get through the chapiter chap-iter we are at work upon." Giorgio Passeri insisted that Emilia, as she was called, should abandon such a strange idea, for she must indeed have other things in her mind that day. But he was immovable she had always been m little obstinate. ''Very well," conoluded the father, finally. "Sit down at the table." And After standing for a moment perplexed he continued: "We will let the book go, today. Take instead some other paper." " What are you going to do?' she asked. f "Keep still and write," he answered, approaching her and caressing her hair. Then he began to dictate in the following follow-ing way: "They two, father and daughter, had lived alone together for many years." "Oh," said Emilia, lifting her eyes, "just like you and me." 1 He motioned to her to keep silence, and then continued: "They were left alone when she was only 3 years old, and he was not yet 30." "" "But that is just our case." "If you keep on interrupting me I hall lose the thread of my story." , And he continued: "She, poor little thing, could, not appreciate ap-preciate her loss; but he, in addition to bis own sorrow, felt that which she would have realized if she hod been older. It seemed to him that all his affection af-fection could not possibly make up to his dear little girl the lack of a mother's aweet and tender care. Some of his relations re-lations offered to take charge of the child, as it was thought difficult for him , to bring her up alone; but he rejected' the generous offer as if it had been an ffonse. He would not be deprived of Lis child or make her twice an orphan." Two or three times during this dictation dicta-tion Emilia had tried to put in a word, Dnt her father, with a slight movement of command and of entreaty, had silenced hen: observations, and she finally resigned herself to write in silence, as he wished. "Thus they lived together, having in tho house only two servants and a governess, gov-erness, the latter of which, to tell the truth, was changed quite frequently, so jealous was the father of any one who had an influence over the child. And, as she grew up, beautiful, lovely and intelligent, intel-ligent, he took pride in carrying out her education himself. . .' "She, on her part, was not happy unless un-less she was with her father; he was not only her instructor, but the choEen companion com-panion of her sport, and it was seldom that she ever left the houso with any one but him. , "The lapse of time only served to make this band stronger and more tender. When she was 13 years old a rather amusing scene occurred between the father fa-ther and daughter. She declared one evening, with great solemnity, that she would live forever with her babbo, and sign himself to what he could not prevent. pre-vent. He, therefore, tried to put on a cheerful face in the presence of the lovers, and to discuss pleasantly the details de-tails and arrangements of the marriage. The daughter, poor, dear creature, tried to harmonize the old affections and duties du-ties with the new, and, to her credit be it said, she succeeded very well up to a certain point. "She told her father repeatedly I hat she wauled to perform in advauce for him all the little acts of lovo and duty that would no longer bo possible after she had left the house. .And according to her old habit, she came every morning to his study prepared to act ae his secretary secre-tary for a couple of hours or more. Nevertheless, in spite of her efforts, she showed that her heart was not there, and it often happened that she would pay ni attention to what her father was saying, but would sit, pen in hand, with her eyes looking out on vacancy and her mind far away. In short, the father realized, re-alized, little by little, that she had other things in her head than nia imaginings. He offered to excuse her, as ono often does with servants, in ordsr to get rid of them decently, but she rebelled against the sentence, became excited and declared de-clared that she did not wav.t to give up her place as secretary until tLe last day, that being also the wish of the aforesaid young ufifn, and so on, and so forth, to the same -effect. -I'Tfe? author had at that tin'.e just com- that she would not do like other girls who leave their home some fine day and go off with the first comer. , The father then replied, smiling: 'Oh, you will do just as the others do,' and she rose in great fury, and began to cry and declare that her father did not want her any mere, if he talked in that way. She rushed sobbing from hia presence, shut herself up in her room, and was in a tovering passion for two or three days. The signor" This time Emilia could not restrain herself, and said, laughing: "TheSignor liiorgio." ., "No, no," said her father "the Signor Sig-nor Puttini." And he went on dictating: "The Signor Puntini was afflicted with ftp. incurable malady." "Oh, babbo!" exclaimed Emilia, "you bad an incurable malady?" i "Yes, indeed. But go on writing and flon't interrupt me." "Tho malady of spoiling paper with writing novels, romances and poems, which went so far as to be printed and bound and seen in the windows of the booksellers. , "Now this daughter had a great curiosity curios-ity to read all tins trash while it was yet in manuscript, and she used to rummage through her fathers papers, a thing which was not without some inconven-iennj?, inconven-iennj?, ' However, with the inconvenience inconven-ience there was some advantage, and the 5yffit?vth:.TJieajiiorjha;- |