CHAPTER VI.

THE HOME OF LITTLE KATY.

"There is a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow."

"He, that of the greatest works is finisher, Oft does them by the weakest minister."

I have still another little episode in this life drama--a scene in one of the acts, which we may as well put upon the stage at this point of the story, though it is quite unconnected with those that immediately precede it; yet you will find a character here, in whom you have, perhaps, taken some interest. It is the termination of the story of the Hot Corn girl, whom you read about in chapter second, whose portrait you have already looked at in the frontispiece of this volume.

You have read in the story of Little Katy, what a world of cheap happiness can be bought with a shilling. No one of the thousand silver coins wasted that night in hotel, saloon, bar-room, grocery, or rum hole, gave the waster half the pleasure that that shilling gave to three individuals--he that gave and those who received. No ice-cream, cake, jelly, or health-destroying candy, tasted half so sweet as the bread purchased with that sixpence.

No man ever made so small an investment, that paid so well, both in a pecuniary point of view and large increase of human happiness, for it has been the means of waking up benevolence, not dead but sleeping, to look about and inquire, what shall I do to remove this misery-producing curse from among us? Thousands have read the story of Little Katy, and thousands of little hearts have been touched. Many hands have been opened--more will be. These little stories, detailing some of the sufferings which crime and misery bring upon the poor of this city, will be, as some of them already have been, read with tearful eyes. You have read the story of a poor neglected child of a drunken mother--not always so--wasting her young life away with no object but to live, with no thought of death. It is a sad tale, and it is not yet finished. The next night after the interview with that neglected, ill-used little girl, the same plaintive cry of "Hot corn, hot corn!--here's your nice hot corn!" came up through our open window, on the midnight air, while the rain came dripping down from the overcharged clouds, in just sufficient quantities to wet the thin single garment of the owner of that sweet young voice, without giving her an acceptable excuse for leaving her post before her hard task was completed.

At length the voice grew faint, and then ceased altogether, and then I knew that exhausted nature slept--that a tender house-plant was exposed to the chilling influence of a night rain--that an innocent girl had the curb-stone for a bed and an iron post for a pillow--that by and by she would awaken, not invigorated with refreshing slumber, but poisoned with the sleep-inhaled miasma of the filth-reeking gutter at her feet, which may he breathed with impunity awake, but like the malaria of our southern coast, is death to the sleeper.[B] Not soothed by a dreamy consciousness of hearing a mother's voice tuning a soft lullaby of

"Hush, my child, lie still and slumber;"

but starting like a sentinel upon a savage frontier post, with alarm at having slept; shivering with night air and fear, and, finally, compelled to go home, trembling like a culprit, to hear the harsh words of a mother--yes, a mother--but oh! what a mother--cursing her for not performing an impossibility, because exhausted nature slept--because her child had not made a profit which would have enabled her more freely to indulge in the soul and body-destroying vice of drunkenness, to which she had fallen from an estate, when "my carriage" was one of the "household words" which used to greet the young ears of that poor little death-stricken, neglected, street sufferer.

[B] On many of the Rice and Sea Island plantations in South Carolina and Georgia, in fact upon almost all the coast lands of these States, the malaria is so deadly in its effects upon the sleeper, that every effort is made to keep awake by those who are accidentally exposed for a single night to its influence. Many of the most beautiful residences in the vicinity of Charleston, are uninhabited by white persons in summer. The negroes are not at all, or only slightly affected. The overseers often have a little cabin in the most convenient pine woods, to which they retire before nightfall.

No doubt, though to a less deadly degree, the malaria arises from the filth in our dirty streets, killing its thousands of little children every year.

It was past midnight when she awoke, and found herself, with a desperate effort, just able to reach the bottom of the rickety stairs which led to her _home_. We shall not go up now. In a little while, reader, you shall see where live the city poor.

You shall go with me at midnight to the _Home of little Katy_. You shall see where she lies upon her straw pallet in a miserable garret; yet she was born in as rich a chamber as you or you, who tread upon soft Turkey carpets when you go to your downy couches.

Wait a little.

Tired--worn with the daily toil--for such is the work of an editor who caters for the appetites of his morning readers--I was not present the next night to note the absence of that cry from its accustomed spot; but the next and next, and still on, I listened in vain--that voice was not there. True, the same hot-corn cry came floating upon the evening breeze across the park, or wormed its way from some cracked-fiddle voice down the street, up and around the corner, or out of some dark alley, with a broken English accent, that sounded almost as much like "lager bier" as it did like the commodity the immigrant, struggling to eke out his precarious existence, wished to sell. All over this great poverty-burdened, and wicked waste, extravagant city, at this season, that cry goes up, nightly proclaiming one of the habits of this late-supper eating people.

Yes, I missed that cry. "Hot Corn" was no longer like the music of a stringed instrument to a weary man, for the treble-string was broken, and, for me the harmony spoiled.

Who shall say there is not music in those two little words? "Hot Corn" shall yet be trilled from boudoir and parlor, as fairy fingers run over the piano keys. Hot Corn! Hot Corn! shall yet be the chorus of the minstrel's song, and hot tears shall flow at the remembrance of "Little Katy." But that one song had ceased. That voice came not upon my listening ear.

What was that voice to me? It was but one in a thousand, just as miserable, which may be daily heard where human misery has its abode. That voice, as some others have, did not haunt me, but its absence, in spite of all reasoning, made me feel uneasy. I do not believe in spiritual manifestations half as strongly as some of the costermongers of the fruits of other men's brains, who eke out their existence by retailing petty scandal to long-eared listeners, would have them believe; yet I do believe there is a spirit in man, not yet made manifest, which makes us yearn after coexisting spirits in this sphere and in this life, and that there is no need of going beyond it, after strange idols.

I shall not stop to inquire whether it was a spirit of "the first, third or sixth sphere," that prompted me, as I left my desk one evening, to go down among the abodes of the poor, with a feeling of certainty that I should see or hear something of the lost voice, or what spirit led me on; perhaps it was the spirit of curiosity; no matter, it led, and I followed, in the road I had seen that little one go before--it was my only cue--I knew no name--had no number, nor knew any one that knew her whom I was going to find. Yes, I knew that good Missionary; and she had told me of the good words which he had spoken; but would he know her from the hundred just like her? Perhaps. It will cost nothing to inquire. I went down Centre street with a light heart; I turned into Cross street with a step buoyed with hope; I stood at the corner of Little-Water street, and looked around inquiringly of the spirit, and mentally said, "which way now?" The answer was a far-off scream of despair. I stood still with an open ear, for the sound of prayer, followed by a sweet hymn of praise to God, went up from the site of the Old Brewery, in which I joined, thankful that that was no longer the abode of all the worst crimes ever concentrated under one roof. Hark! a step approaches. My unseen guide whispered, "ask him." It were a curious question to ask a stranger, in such a strange place, particularly one like him, haggard with over much care, toil, or mental labor. Prematurely old, his days shortened by overwork in his young years, as his furrowed face and almost frenzied eye hurriedly indicate, as we see the flash of the lamp upon his dark visage, as he approaches with that peculiar American step which impels the body forward at railroad speed. Shall I get out of his way before he walks over me? What if he is a crazy man? No; the spirit was right--no false raps here. It is that good missionary. That man who has done more to reform that den of crime, the Five Points of New-York, than all the Municipal Authorities of this Police-hunting, and Prison-punishing city, where misfortune is deemed a crime, or the unfortunate driven to it, by the way they are treated with harsh words, damp cells--death cells--and cold prison-bars, instead of being reformed, or strengthened in their resolution to reform, by kind words; means to earn food, rather than forced to steal it; by schools and infant-teaching, rather than old offenders-punishing.

"Sir," said Mr. Pease, "what brings you here at this time of night, for I know there is an object; can I aid you?"

"Perhaps, I don't know--a foolish whim--a little child--one of the miserable, with a drunken mother."

"Come with me, then. There are many such. I am just going to visit one, who will die before morning--a sweet little girl, born in better days, and dying now--but you shall see, and then we will talk about the one you would seek to save."

We were soon treading a narrow alley, where pestilence walketh in darkness; and crime, wretched poverty, and filthy misery, go hand in hand to destruction.

"Behold," said my friend, "the fruits of our city excise. Here is the profit of money spent for license to kill the body and damn the soul." Proven by the awful curses and loud blows of a drunken husband upon a wife, once an ornament of society, and exemplary member of a Christian church, that came up out of one of the low cellars, which human beings call by the holy name of home!

The fetid odor of this filthy lane had been made more fetid by the late and almost scalding hot rains, until it seemed to us that such an air was only fit for a charnel house. With the thermometer at 86, at midnight, how could men live in such a place, below the surface of the earth? Has rum rendered them proof against the effect of carbonic acid gas?

We groped our way along to the foot of an outside stair-case, where our conductor paused for a moment, calling my attention to the spot. "Here," said Mr. Pease, "the little sufferer we are going to see, fainted a few nights ago, and lay all night exposed to the rain, where she was found and beaten in the morning by her miserable mother, just then coming home from a night of debauch and licentiousness, with a man who would be ashamed to visit her in her habitation, or have 'the world' know that he consorted with a street wanderer."

"Beat her! for what?"

"Because she had not sold all her corn, which she had been sent out with the evening before. Poor thing, she had fallen asleep, and some villain had robbed her of her little store, and, as it is with greater crimes, the wicked escaped and the innocent suffered."

I thought aloud:

"Great and unknown cause, hast thou brought me to her very door?"

My friend stared, but did not comprehend the expression. "Be careful," said he, "the stairs are very old, and slippery."

"Beat her?" said I, without regarding what he was saying.

"Yes, beat her, while she was in a fever of delirium, from which she has never rallied. She has never spoken rationally, since she was taken. Her constant prayer seems to be to see some particular person before she dies.

"'Oh, if I could see him once more--there--there--that is him--no, no, he did not speak that way to me--he did not curse and beat me.'

"Such is her conversation, and that induced her mother to send for me, but I was not the man. 'Will he come?' she says, every time I visit her; for, thinking to soothe and comfort her, I promised to bring him."

We had reached the top of the stairs, and stood a moment at the open door, where sin and misery dwelt, where sickness had come, and where death would soon enter.

"Will he come?"

A faint voice came up from a low bed in one corner, seen by the very dim light of a miserable lamp.

That voice. I could not be mistaken. I could not enter. Let me wait a moment in the open air, for there is a choking sensation coming over me.

"Come in," said my friend.

"Will he come?"

Two hands were stretched out imploringly towards the Missionary, as the sound of his voice was recognised.

"She is much weaker to-night," said her mother, in quite a lady-like manner, for the sense of her drunken wrong to her dying child had kept her sober, ever since she had been sick; "but she is quite delirious, and all the time talking about that man who spoke kindly to her one night in the Park, and gave her money to buy bread."

"Will he come?"

"Yes, yes; through the guidance of the good spirit that rules the world, and leads us by unseen paths, through dark places, for His own wise purposes, _he has come_."

The little emaciated form started up in bed, and a pair of beautiful, soft blue eyes glanced around the room, peering through the semi-darkness, as if in search of something heard but unseen.

"Katy, darling," said the mother, "what is the matter?"

"Where is he, mother? He is here. I heard him speak."

"Yes, yes, sweet little innocent, he is here, kneeling by your bedside. There, lay down, you are very sick."

"Only once, just once, let me put my arms around your neck, and kiss you, just as I used to kiss papa. I had a papa once, when we lived in the big house--there, there. Oh, I did want to see you, to thank you for the bread and the cakes; I was very hungry, and it did taste so good--and little Sis, she waked up, and she eat and eat, and after a while she went to sleep with a piece in her hand, and I went to sleep; hav'n't I been asleep a good while? I thought I was asleep in the Park, and somebody stole all my corn, and my mother whipt me for it, but I could not help it. Oh dear, I feel sleepy now. I can't talk any more. I am very tired. I cannot see; the candle has gone out. I think I am going to die. I thank you; I wanted to thank you for the bread--I thought you would not come. Good bye--Sissy, good bye. Sissy--you will come--mother--don't--drink--any more--Mother--good b--."

"'Tis the last of earth," said the good man at our side--"let us pray."

Reader, Christian reader, little Katy is in her grave. Prayers for her are unavailing. There are in this city a thousand just such cases. Prayers for them are unavailing. Faith without works, works not reform. A faithful, prayerful resolution, to work out that reform which will save you from reading the recital of such scenes--such fruits of the rum trade as this before you, will work together for your own and others' good. Go forth and listen. If you hear a little voice crying _Hot Corn!_ think of poor Katy, and of the hosts of innocents slain by that remorseless tyrant--rum. Go forth and seek a better spirit to rule over us. Cry aloud, "Will he come," and the answer will be, "Yes, yes, he is here."

* * * * *

The commendation given to these stories, as they were published in the _Tribune_, was an inducement for me to "keep the cry of _Hot Corn_ before the people," for I saw that they appreciated my labors; and I set about collecting other materials, and writing out notes made during many a night-watch among the habitations of men, yet the abodes of misery, with which this city abounds.

Many an anxious mind, after conning the preceding chapters, has yearned after further knowledge touching the things therein hinted at. Many have asked to know more of "Sissy," and Little Katy's mother. It is a laudable curiosity: it shall be gratified in due time. I have other stories--other scenes where you may stop a moment and drop a tear, and then we will walk on with our Life Scenes. First we will finish that of Maggie's mother.