Year: 1879

THE ASSASSIN Visited BY HIS WIFE AND


cHILD-rHE WOMAN AT HOME.


There stood curious group in the little green
garden of the Tombs yesterday at noon-an expect
ant knot of alers policemen and lawyers. In their
midst leaning quietly against the basin of the fouD-
tain. was pretty young woman. with a Growing
baby in her arms. 1t was Vittora. wife OF Fran
cesco Porcello who murdered Michael Bolender
She had just been released from the Infant Asylum
on Wards Island. having been transferred thither
for the child's sake from Blackwelps Island. to
which she had been committed q vagrant on COM
piaint of officer OF the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Children. Mr.. William +. Kintzing,
her husband s counsel. had sued out writ of hs-
beas corpus and Judge Donohue promptly dis
charged her. The fact was that the prison authori-
turn Porcello from his thoughts of sui
eide. and felt that where the priests and
lawyers had failed the wife would succeed.
With her came Mr.. Berganaini the interpreter Presi-
dent Cox, of the Commission of Charities and Cor
rection and tall Genoese woman Julia Crovo, who is
related to Porceo AS mother and babe stood in the
sunlight the gazers astonshed by their beauty.
Small in stature. dressed in calico with plaits
of soft brown hair curled round her bare head the
mothers comeliness of the purest Italian type.
Her eyes of hazel. her flushed cheeks delicately
bronzed. her srtless grace of manner. seemed as
strange in the Tombs as they would be natural in
the Riviera. The chubby. faxen haired boy her
breast went blinking his big. brown eyes at the
alers and kicking out his shoeless and sockless feet
in widest glee "a very pretty picture said
criminal LAWYER whose practice had rarely Afforded
him such sight


HUSBAND AND WIFE,


What would Porcello say or do? That was what
everybody quietly asked himself He had seemed
to grow stronger and less morose since he knew his
wi W He had win utAriI Y ia
food and had slept we'll. They had dressed him III
clean coored shirt and clean pair of linen
had removed the leather muf in which his hands were
bound, and though his hair was still uncombed and
the selfnicted scar was not closed up his wrist.
yet the look OF suspicion had left his eyes. and
he walked erect between his keepers from the
cell to the garden door. For instant. half
dazed. he raised his hand to shut Oft the
sun. For instant he looked round irresolute.
1t only for an instant. The young wife had
gided silently forward from the fountain. and the
child was in his arms. "BdmbinO mi0," he muir
mured softly stroking its fair hair. and his
fell fast the head of the wondering child. There
long pause Of silence before he embraced his
wife. He seemed to have forgotten her His
thoughts all for the child and he continued
softly to murmur "Bambtao mio. and to stroke its
hair. There was hardly dry eye in the throng that
filed that little garden. Keepers, who have wit
messed executions unmoved turned their heads away;
Tombs lawyers felt strange choking in the throat,
and for Warden Finn he led the way without
word to the consultation room and made the
united couple sit together hand in hand beside its
barred window. 1t clear that this pretty. simple
wife had as little notion of her husbands peril
the bare-legged baby playing on the floor. She had
long been accustomed to miseries, and this was
more-that was all. She told him how they had
rested her for begging. She told him how the child
had been merrier and happier than Wards
Island. She said not word of the murder-pos-
sibly she knew nothing-but just kissed him, prom
ised to return on MONDAY, swung the baby on her
shoulder and was gone.


THE AssAssTN's HOME.


1t was in garret at No. 3S Baxter street that
old was shc9 She scarcely knew; but friends told
her she was twenty-three At any rate, she was sew
six years ago. Good to her? Oh. yes with eloquent
glance of the hazel eyes). he had been good 80
good. He was older than she-many years older.
aud she was only a child. feeding her goats.
when francesca left the village and went to the
war. She had lived with her parents in cottage
at Serra with the big mountains rising behind
and the clover fields stretching far away into the
distance She had grown to be almost woman
before ..Cecco' came back and knew that he had
come to regard her with very different eyes than
when, as child, he had carried her back from the
fields in the evening. Her parents said he
put her hand in his. Very after they
ried they came to New York. Then they knew for
steadily during the summer months at
the candy factory in the winter his work
was more uncertain, and at times they came
near starving. Her husband would stay ut
home with the chid-for he was always despondent--
and she would sell fruit the streets. Sell enough
to live? Sometimes. but not often. Gentlemen
would turn to look ut her and would buy her apples
but she could put by nothing for an evil day. Two
sand times prettier! Then Francesca discharged.
They were penniless There not loaf in the
house. 1t was rarely IN former days that they had
eaten meat, but now they had nothing. She went
into the streets with her child that fatal morning.
She had not thought of begging-ndeed she
had not lady gave her few cents, and
officer in plain clio thes Immediately arrested her.
She was taken with her baby to the prison. Till
yesterday she had heard nothing OF her husbands
madness; but they told her that when he came homo
and found she was IN Jail. and his child gone. he
sat for hours with his head upon the table, and then
tottered into the street toward the river.


To-day she il penniless, frendless, and utterly
destitute. Her few Italian friends in Baxter street
are almost poor she, aud though more than
willing to do still unable to relieve her dis
tress. They say she good wife and good mother