Apparition

"Get your near-beer, folks, get your near-beer before you see the miracle. It's hot back in that there alley."

A hawker had set up his stand in Chicago's Italian quarter where thousands of agitated people were milling about in the street. Small boys pelted the crowd with rocks. A Negro knifed an Italian. Women were fainting. Already the riot squads were on their way, and perspiring traffic cops were trying to reroute automobiles into side streets. "Madre di Dio!" breathed the Italian women, crossing themselves. "Santissima Maria, what a miracle has come to us!"

A passerby that night last week had seen a strange apparition on the side of a building. Devoutly he fell to his knees. Another, thinking he had fainted, ran to his side, knelt also as he saw the flickering blob of grey light. It was the Holy Virgin and Child! Crowds gathered in front of the building, swarmed into the yard of a Dr. J. J. Stoll, trampled his flowerbed and broke down his fence. They climbed on the roof of his garage; it caved in but they did not care, so exciting was the miracle.

Then a shrewd, skeptical policeman entered the apartment across the street from the shadow Virgin. He walked into the front room. "Hello, Sam," he said to the truculent owner: Sam Genna, gangster and "alky-peddler." Then he pulled down the shade. The apparition, caused by light reflected through a lace curtain, disappeared.

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