CHAPTER II.[A

LITTLE KATY.--A MIDNIGHT INTERVIEW.

What is said in this, will apply to everything similar.

"Here's your nice Hot Corn, smoking hot, smoking hot, just from the pot!" Hour after hour one evening, as I sat over the desk, this cry came up in a soft, plaintive voice, under my window, which told me of one of the ways of the poor to eke out means of subsistence in this over-burdened, ill-fed, and worse-lodged home of misery--of so many without means, who are constantly crowding into the dirtiest purlieus of this notoriously dirty city, where they are exposed to the daily chance of death from some sudden outbreaking epidemic like that now desolating the same kind of streets in New Orleans, and swallowing up its thousands of victims from the same class of poverty-stricken, uncomfortably-provided for human beings, who know not how, or have not the power, to flee to the healthy hills and green fields of the country. Here they live--barely live--in holes almost as hot as the hot corn, the cry of which rung in my ears from dark till midnight.

[A] This chapter was published under the simple title of "Hot Corn," among the "City Items" of the New York Daily Tribune, August 5, 1853. It is but slightly altered from the original text.

"Hot corn! hot corn! here's your nice hot corn," rose up in a faint, child like voice, which seemed to have been aroused by the sound of my step as I was about entering the Park, while the city clock told the hour when ghosts go forth upon their midnight rambles. I started, as though a spirit had given me a rap, for the sound seemed to come out of one of the iron posts which stand as sentinels over the main entrance, forbidding all vehicles to enter, unless the driver takes the trouble to pull up and tumble out of the way one of the aforesaid posts, which is not often done, because one of them, often, if not always, is out of its place, giving free ingress to the court-yard, or livery stable grounds of the City Hall, which, in consideration of the growth of a few miserable dusty brown trees and doubtful colored grass-patches, we call "the Park."

Looking over the post I discovered the owner of the hot corn cry, in the person of an emaciated little girl about twelve years old, whose dirty shawl was nearly the color of the rusty iron, and whose face, hands, and feet, naturally white and delicate, were grimmed with dirt until nearly of the same color. There were two white streaks running down from the soft blue eyes, that told of the hot scalding tears that were coursing their way over that naturally beautiful face.

"Some corn, sir," lisped the little sufferer, as she saw I had stopped to look at her, hardly daring to speak to one who did not address her in rough tones of command, such as "give me some corn, you little wolf's whelp," or a name still more opprobrious both to herself and mother. Seeing I had no look of contempt for her, she said, piteously, "please buy some corn, sir."

"No, my dear, I do not wish any; it is not very healthy in such warm weather as this, and especially so late at night."

"Oh dear, then, what shall I do?"

"Why, go home. It is past midnight, and such little girls as you ought not to be in the streets of this bad city at this time of night."

"I can't go home--and I am so tired and sleepy. Oh dear!"

"Cannot go home. Why not?"

"Oh, sir, my mother will whip me if I go home without selling all my corn. Oh, sir, do buy one ear, and then I shall have only two left, and I am sure she might let little Sis and me eat them, for I have not had anything to eat since morning, only one apple the man gave me, and part of one he threw away. I could have stole a turnip at the grocery when I went to get--to get something in the pitcher for mother, but I dared not. I did use to steal, but Mr. Pease says it is naughty to steal, and I don't want to be naughty, indeed I don't; and I don't want to be a bad girl, like Lizzy Smith, and she is only two years older than me, if she does dress fine; 'cause Mr. Pease says she will be just like old drunken Kate, one of these days. Oh dear! now there goes a man, and I did not cry hot corn, what shall I do?"

"Do! There, that is what you shall do," as I dashed the corn in the gutter. "Go home; tell your mother you have sold it all, and here is the money."

"Wont that be a lie, sir? Mr. Pease says we must not tell lies."

"No, my dear, that wont be a lie, because I have bought it and thrown it away, instead of eating it."

"But, sir, may I eat it then, if you don't want it?"

"No, it is not good for you; good bread is better, and here is a sixpence to buy a loaf, and here is another to buy some nice cakes for you. Now that is your money; don't give it to your mother, and don't stay out so late again. Go home earlier and tell your mother you cannot sell all your corn and you cannot keep awake, and if she is a good mother she won't whip you."

"Oh, sir, she is a good mother sometimes. But I am sure the grocery man at the corner is not a good man, or he would not sell my mother rum, when he knows--for Mr. Pease told him so--that we poor children are starving. Oh, I wish all the men were good men like him, and then my mother would not drink that nasty liquor, and beat and starve us, 'cause there would be nobody to sell her any--and then we should have plenty to eat."

Away she ran down the street towards that reeking centre of filth, poverty and misery, the noted Five Points of New, York.

As I plodded up Broadway, looking in here and there upon the palatial splendors of metropolitan "saloons"--I think that is the word for fashionable upper class grog-shops--I almost involuntarily cried, "hot corn," as I saw the hot spirit of that grain, under the various guises of "pure gin"--"old rum"--"pale brandy"--"pure port"--"Heidsick"--or "Lager-bier"--poured down the throats of men--and ah! yes, of women, too, whose daughters may some day sit, at midnight, upon the cold curbstone, crying "Hot corn," to gain a penny for the purchase of a drink of the fiery dragon they are now inviting to a home in their bosoms, whose cry in after years will be, "Give, give, give," and still as unsatisfied as the horse-leech's daughters.

Again, as I passed on up that street, still busy and thronged at midnight, as a country village at mid-day intermission of church service, ever and anon, from some side-street, came up the cry of "Hot corn--hot corn!" and ever as I heard it, and ever as I shall, through all years to come, I thought of that little girl and her drunken mother, and the "bad man" at the corner grocery, and that her's was the best, the strongest Maine Law argument which had ever fallen upon my listening ear.

Again, as I turned the corner of Spring street, the glare and splendor of a thousand gas lights, and the glittering cut glass of that, for the first time lighted-up, bar-room of the Prescott House--so lauded by the press for its magnificence--dashes our eyes and blinds our senses, till we are almost ready to agree, that first class hotels must have such Five Point denizen-making appurtenances, as this glittering room, shamelessly, invitingly open to the street; when that watch-word cry, like the pibroch's startling peal, came up from the near vicinity, wailing like a lost spirit on the midnight air--"Hot corn, hot corn!--here's your nice hot corn--smoking hot--hot--hot corn."

"Yes, yes!" I hear you cry--"it is a watchword--a glorious watchword, that bids us do or die--until the smoking hot, fiery furnace-like gates of hell, like this one now yawning before us, shall cease to be licensed by a Christian people, or send delicate little girls at midnight through the streets, crying 'Hot corn,' to support a drunken mother, whose first glass was taken in a 'fashionable saloon,' or first-class liquor-selling hotel."

"Hot corn," then, be the watchword of all who would rather see the grain fed to the drunkard's wife and children, than into the insatiable hot maw of the whiskey still.

Let your resolutions grow hot and strong, every time you hear this midnight city cry, that you will devote, if nothing more,

"Three grains of corn, mother, Only three grains of corn,"

towards the salvation of the thousand equally pitiable objects as the little girl whose wailing cry has been the inciting cause of this present dish of "Hot Corn--smoking hot!"