CHAPTER VII.

MAGGIE'S MOTHER.

Let go thy hold--the glass has run out its sands--the wheel goes down hill. There is a time to mourn.

Reagan took the pledge, and took up his residence at that house of the destitute. At first, he did not ask to live with his wife. He said, he was not worthy of her. He begged Tom to write to Maggie: "I know it will make her happy to learn that I am here." So it did. The rose had another rival now. Her cheeks blossomed afresh. Reagan worked busily--he did up a great many little jobs of joiner-work; and when there was nothing more to do at that, he said, let me go into the bake-shop, shoe-shop, anywhere. I will sit down with those women and use the needle, rather than be idle, or venture out where tempters will beset me. So he went on for some time, till he grew stronger and gained more confidence--his wife strengthened him by her counsel, and then he ventured out to work where he could earn good wages. It was curious to see him go quite out of his way, around a whole square, perhaps, to avoid going by one of his old haunts.

"I have suffered so much," said he to me one day, "from the temptation of these places, where the liquor is placed in our sight on purpose to allure and whet our depraved appetites, that it is no wonder that the poor inebriate loses his balance and falls into the abyss. If there was no liquor in sight, there would be no danger of our falling back into old habits. I never should think of going to look after it. The danger is when it is thrust right under my nose. Oh, that these rum shops might be shut up, or at least, kept out of sight!"

This was the earnest prayer of one who knew the demon power of temptation which one, who is trying to reform, has constantly to combat with.

Those who sell liquor know the advantage to them of this temptation. So they fix up the street corners with all the enticing attractions of artistic skill. The cool ice water; the free lunch; the ever-burning light for the smoker's convenience; the arm-chair and easy lounge, and cool room in summer, or well heated one in winter; the ever open, always free resting-place for the tired walker, or ennui-tormented genteel loafer, are only a few of the inducements to just "step in a moment;" and then the old appetite is aroused by the sight and smell of liquor in the glistening array of cut glass, and by the influence of a score of old companions standing before the bar--they will stand before another bar hereafter--or sitting at the little white marble tables, sipping or sucking "sherry cobblers" and "mint juleps" through a glass "straw."

Woe to the tired walker who has been tempted into one of these invitingly open rooms. If he has the power to resist his own inclination to drink, he may not have enough to resist the persuasion of half a dozen of his acquaintances, or the force of crazed brains and strong hands, by which he is dragged up and held, while they merit the curse denounced upon those who "put the cup to their neighbor's lips." Perhaps he will be taunted with meanness for coming in to drink water and rest himself, "and not patronise the house."

From this, those of us who desire to see those places of temptation shut up, may take the hint.

Let reading rooms be opened, free to all who choose to come in and read the papers, drink ice water, and enjoy their rest in the shade, or partake of the comforts of a warm room, for a five cent fee. A coffee and tea room, strictly so, may be attached. How much better than drinking such liquor as those who visit all our public places must do, or be set down as mean. "Let them stay at home," is a common answer to those who say they fell by the temptations of such places.

"Suppose," said Jim Reagan to me one day, "that we have no home. That was my case when I was a young man. I lived in a common boarding-house; in my little uncomfortable room I would not stay; where else had I to go but the public bar room, and there I learned to drink; I was a good fellow then; a genteel young man, and married a genteel young girl; I did not go down all at once--it was step by step, slow but sure--to Cale Jones's grocery and the Centre street cellar."

True, thought I, as I entered the front door of the first hotel in this great metropolis, the largest in America, and looked through the splendid marble hall, two hundred feet long, lighted by glittering chandeliers, into the immense drinking saloon of that fashionable place of resort; and I said to myself, "some of these fine forms of men, clothed in fine linen and rich broad cloth, may some day fall as low as thee, poor Jim Reagan. You began your course in just such a genteel drinking room."

"Yes," says he, "and the first drink I ever took in one, for I was brought up a temperance boy, I was dragged up by the strength of two companions, and held while the bar-keeper baptised me, as he called it, by pouring the liquor down my throat, over my head, and saturating my clothes till the smell made me sick, and then they gave me more to settle it. 'A hair of the same dog,' said they, 'will cure the bite.' Bite it was. No mad dog's bite ever caused more sin and sorrow than that bite did me. We cry, 'mad dog,' and kill the poor brute; the worse than brute we 'license' to live."

Thus he would sit and talk by the hour. "If I can only keep out of the way of the tempters," said he, "I never shall drink again."

He was now accumulating money; he always came home to sleep, "for," says he, "I feel, as sure as I enter this door, that I am safe."

It was determined, as soon as Maggie came again, that they would go to keeping house. "If that blessed child was only with me," said the father, as the tears rolled down his furrowed cheeks, "I should feel as though I had a shield--through which none of these traffickers in human souls could reach me. My wife is like an aged counsellor, there is wisdom in her every word, but she cannot go out through the streets, leaning upon my arm, still full of manly strength, like Maggie, while I lean upon her still greater strength--the strength and might of a strong mind."

"Here is a letter from our dear child," said Mrs. Reagan to her husband, one evening as he came in from work. "Sit down and read it aloud, for some how, my old eyes get dim every time I try; I cannot imagine what is the matter with them."

I can. They were full of tears. Strange, that we shed bitter and sweet water from the same fountain.

Reagan put on his spectacles, took the letter, looked at the first words, took them off, wiped the glasses, looked again, repeated the operation, laid both letter and spectacles upon the table, got up and walked the room back and forth, then he tried to speak--to utter the first words of that letter; if he could get over that he could go on, but he could not, they stuck in his throat. At length he got them up--"Dear father and mother, I am coming home to kiss you both." Simple words! Common every-day words. But they were strong words, for they had overcome the strength of a strong man, and he fell upon his wife's neck and wept like a child.

"Such words to me--me who have kicked, and cuffed, and froze, and starved, and abused that child for years. Oh, God, preserve my life to make her ample amends for my wrongs and her love! Oh, God, preserve her life to make us both happy, and drop a tear at our grave!"

Prayer calms the spirit. Realization and acknowledgment of sin soothes the soul.

Reagan could now read the letter without difficulty. His spectacles did not need wiping again. It was dated,

"Near KATONA, Westchester County, New York.

"DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER:

"I am coming home to kiss you both. I don't know but I shall kiss Tom, for he has written me all about it--I know it all--I know how you was brought in, and how you took the pledge, and how you have kept it, and how industrious you have been, and how you have saved your money, and how you want to go to housekeeping again, and all about it--I know it all. Tom writes me every week. He is a good boy. Well, in two months I am coming down. You need not look for me before, and then, if you want me, I will come and live with you."

"If we want her! Did you ever hear the like? But, then, what is she to do? She is a big girl now, and must not be idle. I wish she had a trade. Every child ought to have a trade."

"Well, well, wife, let us have the balance of the letter."

"Yes, yes, go on; you need not mind what I say. Go on."

"Let me see; where was I? 'Come and live with you,' that's it."

"And now I must tell you such a piece of news--good news. Oh, it was a good thing I came up here. I have got a trade--a trade that will support us all when you get so you cannot work."

"Heaven bless the girl, what is it?"

"Do wait, wife, and you shall hear."

"It is a nice, genteel trade, too. Now we will take a house, and father will work at his trade, and mother will do the house-work, and I will work at my trade, and we shall live so happy."

"So we shall. But, dear me, why don't she tell what it is?"

"So she will if you let me alone. A girl must have her own way to tell it; probably she will do that in a postscript."

"Well, read on. I am so impatient."

"Perhaps you would like to know what my trade is?"

"Why to be sure we should. Why don't she tell?"

"So I will tell you. I am a stock-maker--those things the gentlemen wear round their necks. And it is very curious how I learned the trade. A lady from New York--oh, she is a lady!--came up here on a visit, and for work she brought along some stocks to make. She lives in New York. I believe she keeps a few boarders, and makes stocks. She is a widow lady, quite young, and very pretty, only she is in bad health; she has no family, only her uncle, who is an old bachelor--a nice old gentleman, who has adopted her as his daughter, and is going to give her all he has when he dies. She has no father and mother, as I have, and no brothers and sisters; nobody to love but the old uncle--he does love her, so do I. I did not at first. I was afraid of her. I thought she was some grand city lady; and she used to sit and sew in her room, only when her uncle--Papa she calls him, and he calls her daughter--'Athalia, daughter,' so sweet; is it not a sweet name? Her name is Athalia Morgan--"

"Morgan, Morgan--Athalia Morgan. I will warrant it is she. Don't you remember, wife, that old Morgan, the great shipping merchant? his son married a sewing girl, and his sister married George Wendall."

"Oh, oh, how singular! It was she that was talking when Maggie took me into the temperance meeting that night, telling how her husband died. And now Maggie has met with another of the family. And her husband must be dead too."

"Yes, he died just as miserable a death as Wendall. Let us read on and see what of his wife. I hope he did not drag her down with him as I did mine."

"James, James, you are not to speak of anything that is past."

"Well, well," and he brushed away another tear and read on:

"After she had been here a few days, our folks told her about me, and how I used to run the streets, and how I got into the House of Industry, and how they got me from there, and what a good girl I had been--yes, they did--and then Mrs. Morgan, she began to talk to me so kindly; and then I told her everything about myself, and some about you, and she told me a great many things about herself. Oh, it would be such a story to put in a book. And then she grew as fond of me as I was of her. And every day when I had my work done, and every evening, I used to be up in her room, and she showed me all about her work, and I used to help her, and now she declares that I can make just as good a stock as she can, and almost as fast. She can make eight in a day; when I help her, odd times and evenings, she can make twelve. Last week she made, with what I did, seventy-two, and put them all in a box. How nice they do look! That is seventy-two York shillings--nine dollars! And she says when I come home to live, she will recommend me--I must have a good recommend to get work--when I can get just as much such work as I can do. Oh, but she is a good woman! I guess you would cry though as much as I have, to hear her story. I will tell it you some day. Mrs. Morgan is going down to-morrow. I wish I was. But I cannot. In two months my time is up; then you will see me. Now, good night. Say 'good by' to Tom for me. Kiss mother, father, and ever love your

"MAGGIE."

"Oh, James, something tells me that if she don't come before that, I never shall see her. But you will be happy with her. You will live a long life, I hope, for her to bless and comfort you in your old age. You are not so old and so broken down as I am."

"All my fault, all my fault. If I had treated you as a rational man should treat a wife, you would not be so broken down now."

"You must not look back. Look ahead and aloft. Think what a treasure of a daughter you have got. How I should like to see her once more before I go to my rest, and give her my blessing; and oh! how I should like to see that blessed woman, that Mrs. Morgan. I want to bring her and Elsie together, and make peace on earth as there will be in heaven, where I hope to meet them both. They will soon follow. This life, at best, is short. Mine will be, I am sure."

"Don't have such gloomy forebodings, wife; it seems to me that you were never in better health."

"I know it, and never more happy."

This was on Thursday evening. On Saturday evening everybody was astonished to see Maggie come bounding in, with a step as light and quick as a playful lamb.

"Where's mother? Is she well? Has anything happened? Where is father? Is everything all right with him?" were the questions she asked, in such rapid succession that nobody could answer any one of them.

"Where is Tom? Is he well? Where is Mr. Pease and Mrs. Pease? Are they well? Is mother in the kitchen?"

"Yes, yes, yes, yes, to the whole string."

Away she went, three stairs at a time, and then she almost overwhelmed her mother with kisses and questions; and up she went to the third story, and there was father in his room, reading the Bible. When had she ever seen that before? The last time she saw him, he was so dreadfully intoxicated that he did not know his own child, that was lifting him out of the gutter. Now he was sober, well clothed, cheerful, and happy. As she opened the door he read:

"Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes?

"They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.

"Look not thou upon the wine when it is red; when it giveth his color in the cup; when it moveth itself aright.

"At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.

"Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and--"

And he looked up, as his ear caught a little rustle of a woman's clothes, and his eyes beheld a strange woman--a beautiful, neatly-dressed young woman, with laughing, bright eyes and rosy cheeks, and such a saucy little straw hat, so tastily trimmed--Mrs. Morgan did that--and altogether such a lady-like girl, that he did not recognise her, and he turned his eyes again to the book and repeated:

"Thine eyes shall behold strange women--"

"Father!"

The book dropped from his knees to the floor, as he sprang towards her.

"Am I so strange, father, that you did not know me?"

"Indeed, my daughter, I was afraid to speak; I did not know but a strange woman had been sent to punish me, to 'sting me like an adder.' Oh, Maggie, you don't know how I feel that I deserve it. And yet you are so good. You are a strange woman. It is strange, passing strange, to think that my daughter, my little neglected, dirty, ragged, mischievous--"

"Wild Maggie, father."

"Yes, she had run wild; should be the lovely--you do look lovely, Maggie--girl now in my arms. Oh, Maggie! Maggie! this is all your work."

"No, no, father; you must give the good Missionary his share of the credit; and the good people all over the country who have sent him money and clothes to feed and clothe the naked, and reform the drunkard. What should we have been to-day, if he had not come to live in the Five Points, father?"

"I should have been in my grave; a poor, miserable drunkard's grave; it is awful to think where else I should have been."

"Well, well, father, you are happy now,"

"Yes, I am, and so is mother, and we shall be more so when we get a home of our own, and all live together. Why, Maggie, why, who did dress you up so neat?"

"Oh, my new friend I wrote you about, Mrs. Morgan--you got my letter--yes--well, I do wish you could see her, she is such a good woman."

So they talked on, and then the old lady came up, and then Maggie told how they had arranged it all. On Monday, father was to see if he could find a couple of nice rooms, and Maggie was going to see Mrs. Morgan, for Mrs. Morgan's old uncle had told Maggie, that whenever she wanted to go to keeping house, to come to him, she did not know what for, but she was sure it was something good, for he was a good man, but he never let anybody know what he did for poor folks, he did love to do things in his own way. And Mrs. Morgan was going to write up to the people where she lived, and if father and mother wanted her, they would let her come before her time was up.

"Your father will want you."

"Will you, too? Do not you want me, mother?"

"I do not know, Maggie, I can hardly tell. Who can tell what a day may bring forth. I am glad to see you; I have been praying all day, that the good Spirit would direct your steps hither to-day."

"Did you pray that last night?"

"Yes."

"And this morning?"

"Yes."

"I thought so--I felt it, all night, all the morning, just as though a little stream of fire was running through me, all over; now in my head, now, in my heart, now in my very fingers' ends; now I started at a whisper in my ear, that sounded just like mother, saying, 'Oh, Maggie! Oh, that she would come! Oh, that I could see her once more!' and then I felt as though I must come. I was afraid something was going to happen. But now I find you all well, I see what a foolish girl I have been."

"No, Maggie, not foolish, not foolish; something tells me that you have only obeyed the dictates of a good heart, guided by an invisible power. But we will not talk about it any more now. I have arranged a place for you to sleep to-night, for the house is very full, and we can scarcely find beds for those we have, and there are applications for more poor children every day. Do you remember that pretty little Italian beggar girl, Madalina, that you used to go out with sometimes? She is going to sleep in that little room, and you may sleep with her."

"Oh, mother, she is so dirty!"

"She used to be, she is not so now. She was so when she ran the streets, just like another little girl."

"Oh, mother, I know who you mean, but I did not know that she had been improved."

The next day, the father and mother and daughter were sitting side by side in the chapel, and it was the remark of more than one, "Oh, what a change!" "Is it possible that that is old drunken Reagan and his wife, that used to live in that Centre street cellar, and that that is 'Wild Maggie?' What a change! Why she is real pretty, and so bright, and so affectionate--see how she looks out the hymn for her mother; and now they all kneel together. Well well, that is better than all drunk together."

After morning service, Mrs. Reagan went into the kitchen to assist about dinner.

"I cannot tell how it is," said she, "but I feel as though this was the last meal I shall ever eat with my husband and Maggie; perhaps I shall not eat this."

She never did.

Half an hour after that, the house was in wild commotion. "Where is Mr. Reagan?--where is Maggie?--call the doctor!--oh, dear!--oh, dear! Mrs. Reagan is in a fit."

It was a fit which all must have sooner or later. Her forebodings, from whatever cause they came, had given her prescience of her death.

The husband and daughter were soon kneeling over her where she had fallen upon the floor, vainly trying to revive animation. The physician vainly essayed his skill.

"It is too late. My mother is in heaven."

"It is certain she is in the hands of God, and she died with a blessing on her lips for her child," said one of the women who were present when she fell.

"What did she say, Angeline?"

"Sally, how was it? you heard it best."

This is drunken Sal and old Angeline, whom you have seen before. They, too, are inmates; sober, industrious ones, of the House of Industry.

"She said, 'Oh, God, forgive me all my sins! And my husband, forgive him, oh, Lord! as I do. Margaret, oh, God! I thank thee for sending her to see me once more--God bless as I do my dear Maggie. I die in peace, I die--dying--hap--Oh!' and she fell forward; I caught her in my arms, and laid her down gently, but she never breathed again."

"Oh, mother, mother, are you dead, dead, dead! Will you never, never speak to your Maggie again? Oh! it is so hard to part with you now, just as we were going to be so happy, and all live together."

"Yes," said Angeline, "and that reminds me to tell you that she said just before she died, but I thought she was talking wild like, that if she did not see you again, that I must tell you not to go back to Westchester, but you must be sure to stay with your father, he would be so lonesome when she was gone."

The poor husband was lonesome; he already felt it. Then he felt what blessings he had left. He had good health and strength, and a most affectionate good child to comfort him in his old age. And then he poured out such a prayer, as all ought to hear who lack courage to go on in the glorious work of lifting up the fallen, and giving strength to the feeble, and forgiveness to the erring. The day closed in sadness, yet there were some who witnessed the sad scene who felt that "it is good to be afflicted."

The next day after these events I was in Greenwood Cemetery, that lovely resting-place for the dead. It is a landmark in this progressive age, that shows the good fruits of an improved state of society. If any of the readers of these Life Scenes, are curious to know what becomes of the falling leaves of this great forest of human beings, let them go over the Brooklyn South ferry, and follow some of the score of mourning trains that go every day to put away some dead trunk, or lopped limb, or twig, leaf, or flower, perhaps nothing but a bud, which they will plant in earth to blossom in heaven; and they will see where a portion of the fallen go to decay. It is a place for a day, not of gloom, but sweet meditations, such as does the soul good.

I was meditating over a late made grave. It was by the side of one almost old enough to be forgotten, and yet the number of years since it was made were very few, and very, very short. There was a rose bush growing at the head, but I saw through the green leaves the name of "Morgan, Æt. 62." I was not curious to know what Morgan, for my thoughts were far away. I did wonder, it is natural to do so, if that was Mrs. Morgan by his side, and if they had always lain so quiet, without words of contention, or "Caudle Lectures." My doubts were soon to be solved, for now came a cart and a couple of stone setters. How quick, and how carelessly they work; now the hole is dug, now they lift the little stone out of the cart, now they set it upright, now they fill in the dirt around it, now they give a few stamps with heavy boots just over the head of the sleeper--he hears them not--now the stone is planted, now they jump into the cart, slash the whip, and curse the poor old horse for his laziness, and rattle away with a whistle and merry glee. Now we can read the name on the new stone. Ah, it is not his wife--it is "Walter Morgan, Æt. 27." His son--perhaps, an only son--how soon he has come after his father. It is a common name, or I might moralize farther upon what I know of that name. I am interrupted, and walk off a little way and turn to look again. A fine, benevolent looking gentleman--faces do look benevolent--is getting out of a carriage. He is about the age of the elder Morgan. His brother, perhaps. Now, he lifts out a rose bush, in bloom, in its little world, all its own, in an earthen pot. Ah, ha! that is to be planted at the new stone just put in its place. Now he lifts out a lovelier flower. It is a young widow. Fancy is at work now; it says, "Is she pretty?" We are too far off to discern features, but we can think. We do think that a widow who comes to plant a flower at her husband's grave, is a flower of a woman, let her face be what it may.

So I sat down with pencil in hand, writing, "Musings at the Tomb." I had just written, "Benevolent old gent and beautiful young widow," and was going to add, rose bush planted at husband's grave, and all that sort of thing, when somebody slapped me on the back--that knocks out the sentimental--with a clear hearty expression of, "my old friend."

"Why, Lovetree, is this you? Athalia--Mrs. Morgan, I should say."

"No; always call me by the name you first knew me by."

"Then I should call you Lucy."

"No, no, not that, not that."

"Forgive me, but I did not intend to call up unpleasant reminiscences. Ah, what have we here? A little train of mourners, with a tenant for that open grave. See, that is the Missionary from the Five Points."

"And, oh, uncle, that is Maggie, our little Maggie from up the country. It must be her mother. Yes, it is, for she takes the arm of a man with a crape on his hat--it is her father. Her mother has her wish. He will drop a tear at her grave. See, he does; his handkerchief is at his eyes. Oh, it is a sad thing for a husband to follow the wife he has lived with forty years, to such an end as this. Poor Maggie, how she weeps. I must go and see her as soon as the ceremony is over. Suppose, uncle, that we take them in our carriage home with us, it will not be quite so melancholy as it will be to go back to the house of death."

"So we will, and then I will arrange the plan for them to go to housekeeping together. I have already got a place in view."

So they met, and so Athalia said, "Come with us."

And so they went. Maggie looked upon it as another remarkable interposition, or something, at any rate, that she could not account for, that Mrs. Morgan should have felt impelled to come over here to-day, of all other days, and that they should meet so singularly; "for," said she, "fifty different parties might be riding about among these hills, and dales, and groves, looking at this lonely poor grave, and at that twenty thousand dollar monument, and yet no one know that the other was so near. Well, it is a place where all must come. I hope we shall all meet our friends as happily as I have mine to-day."

So they went home with Mrs. Morgan, and three days after they went to a house of their own.

You have already seen how they were able afterwards to say to others, "Come with us," when a houseless widow and her two children stood in the street the night of the fire--the night that rum and its effects made Mrs. Eaton a widow.

Perhaps you would like to see the benevolent gentleman that clothed the naked after that fire? You have seen him. Turn back a leaf and look at him again as he lifts that rose-bush out of the carriage, to plant at that grave. You did not see him in the crowd at the fire, but he was there, and heard his protégé say, "Come with us." He was just going to say it, but he liked it better that Maggie had said it first. Then he said to himself--it was one of his odd freaks of benevolence--I will surprise the dear girl directly, and make her remember those golden words to her dying day.

You have seen him. It was Athalia's uncle.

Who is Athalia?

Turn over. Read.