Chapter 7
Marie's father, Albert Tovesky, was one of the more intelligent
Bohemians who came West in the early seventies. He settled in Omaha
and became a leader and adviser among his people there. Marie was
his youngest child, by a second wife, and was the apple of his eye.
She was barely sixteen, and was in the graduating class of the
Omaha High School, when Frank Shabata arrived from the old country
and set all the Bohemian girls in a flutter. He was easily the buck
of the beer-gardens, and on Sunday he was a sight to see, with his
silk hat and tucked shirt and blue frock-coat, wearing gloves and
carrying a little wisp of a yellow cane. He was tall and fair, with
splendid teeth and close-cropped yellow curls, and he wore a
slightly disdainful expression, proper for a young m
