FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



States. She was an adventurous youngster, and the home town, 

 charming as it was, rather irked her. She finally induced her 

 parents to send her to Boston to study singing. When she got 

 there she soon found that her voice was not worth while, and 

 in some way she got a job on a newspaper. I believe that she 

 did not inform her parents. But Boston did not satisfy her, either, 

 and she induced the managing editor of her paper (she had 

 proved herself a clever writer) to send her to England to write 

 up a certain angle of a rather important aflFair that was transpir- 

 ing at that time. On the steamer, going over, she met a well- 

 to-do young Englishman who married her soon after their arrival 

 in London. 



Of course this is all sketchy. I am telling only the bare facts. 



Her husband caught a bad cold, and tuberculosis developed. 

 They went to the Enghadine, where he died of what we used 

 to call quick consumption. She was broken-hearted and returned 

 to the Enghadine year after year to do what she could for any 

 of the tuberculous young English people who used to go there. 

 Her husband had left her well-to-do. 



The Duke's father was an ardent Italian patriot, a friend of 

 Cavour and of Victor Emmanuel and, of course, of Garibaldi. 

 But he died when his son was a little child. When the boy had 

 reached a certain age (twelve or thirteen or perhaps fourteen) 

 he found out certain things that distressed him extremely, and 

 in his despair he ran away from home (taking with him, fortu- 

 nately, papers to prove his identity) . He got down to Naples and 

 boarded a vessel bound for the Argentine. On reaching Buenos 

 Aires, he did all sorts of work to support himself, even menial 

 things. As he grew to manhood, he got a job as a vaquero on 

 a large cattle ranch owned or managed by an Italian. Here he 

 had all sorts of adventures and had many accidents. He told 

 me that almost every bone in his body had been broken at 



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