CHAPTER XIV.

NEW SCENES AND NEW CHARACTERS.

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil, Would man observingly distil it out."

That was well exemplified in the last chapter. It may be in this. If any of the readers of these "Scenes" suppose the writer lost sight of the chance to do good, and the right time to do it, that the death of "Little Katy," offered, they are quite mistaken. Although he may not be able to do with his own purse, he has a way of procuring others to do a part that is so much needed to be done. He found that Katy had an aunt in the city, who was able to do for her sister, and he took the preliminary steps to restore the poor, lost sheep to the fold from which she had strayed. That he should have lost sight of her for a little while, in the busy whirl of city life, is not surprising. That the reader has been left in suspense, while he has had many other scenes before him, the author hopes he will not regret. We do not travel old, beaten paths, in this volume.

As the subject is new, so is the way of illustrating it. Now, let us walk on.

"There has been a black woman here twice this evening after you, and she says, she must have the sight of ye afore she sleeps, any how."

This was a piece of Irish information, which met me as I opened the door, one night, in rather a melancholy mood, for I was as yet supperless, tired, sleepy, and about half sick, from breathing fetid air four or five hours, while visiting the poorest of the city poor, the denizens of Cow Bay.

Now, it must not be understood that Mrs. McTravers intended to tell me that the Ethiopian female, who had twice called at my abode, and declared that "she must have the sight of me before she slept," had the least desire to gouge out my eyes. On the contrary, she was only anxious to have a sight of the ugly visage I own, and come within speaking distance of me.

"What for? What did she want, Mrs. McTravers?"

"Sure, your honor, it's not the likes of me knows what a lady wants with a lone gentleman at this time o'night."

If I did not swear, I had some very hard thoughts at the blundering awkwardness of this woman, or her entire inability to convey ideas by language, so that I could understand them "at this time of night."

She proceeded to give a most minute description of "the black woman," how she looked, and talked, and dressed.

Who could it be? I run over in my mind all of my African female acquaintances--not large--but not one of them answered the description given by Mrs. McTravers.

I was about proceeding up stairs, when she said, "ye'll surely go and see the sick lady." I had a slight internal intimation that I was nearly losing my patience.

"Mrs. McTravers, what is it about a sick lady? You have not told me a word about anybody, sick or well, except a negro woman, and you have not told me what she wanted."

"And sure, then, I thought you knew all about it. The wench said you knew the lady."

"I know a good many, but how can I tell which one of my acquaintances this may be?"

"Why sure, then I thought you would know when I told you where she lived."

"In the name of common sense, Mrs. McTravers, if you know who the sick woman is, or where she lives, or what she wants, why don't you tell me?"

"Wasn't I going to, only you put me into such a flusteration? There, sure, that'll tell you all about it."

And she handed me a piece of paper, on which was written, in a very delicate lady hand, though evidently nervous, "Madame De Vrai, 53 W--street."

I am sure I must have looked like a living specimen of confusion worse confounded. The name I had never heard before. The street was an unknown locality. I only knew it was a street on the west side of the city, somewhere, and whether it had such a number as "53," was entirely too much for my arithmetic. I determined not to go. Still there was a mystery, that natural curiosity prompted me to solve. Who could it be? "Did the black woman say that I was acquainted with the lady?"

"She did that, and that you had been very kind to her. God bless you for that same, for being so to a stranger and a foreigner too at that. The black woman said you was a blessed good man to the poor lady, and a father to her childer, dead and alive."

Was anything ever so provoking as the stolidity of an Irish servant. Every word she uttered made the mystery still darker. I knew no Madame De Vrai; never heard of the name before in my life--took no credit to myself for any special act of kindness to the poor in general, and certainly could not call to mind any act of my life that would warrant me in appropriating the blessing so heartily offered for my acceptance. As to being the father of the poor woman's "childer, dead and alive," I declared emphatically that it was just no such thing. I would not own them. So I called for something to eat, and determined to go to bed, fully satisfied that African blunders and Irish ditto, duly mixed, had made one this time too large for my mastery, either with my very common name, or by a mistake in the street or number; or else somebody else had undertaken to father this family, and now desired to shift the responsibility; certainly I had not, could not, would not father them. So I sat munching and musing over my bread and butter and cold water, of the scenes of the evening which I had witnessed.

"Would to Heaven I knew what had become of her," I thought aloud.

"Who?" said a kind voice at my elbow. "What lady are you so anxious about now. Any of your Five Point protégés?"

"Yes. You have guessed it exactly. None other."

"Is that what you have been looking for to-night. Do tell me of your visit. What have you seen?"

"More of human misery than I ever saw before in one night. Would you like to hear the detail?"

"Yes, it may do me good to hear how others live, and if worse than I do, it may make me more contented with my own lot."

"Worse than you do? Why, madam, have you not all that is necessary to make life comfortable around you. A neat, airy, well-furnished house, plenty of room, plenty to eat, good bed to sleep on, good baths for evening ablution or morning renovation, and above all the other luxuries of city life, plenty of that greatest of New York's blessings, the Croton water? Now listen how and where others live. In a close, dirty, pent up court, are piles of old bricks and frame houses, perfect rat harbors, filled with human beings, men, women, children, from cellar bottom to garret peak, poor beyond the power of imagination, dirty to a degree that is sickening to behold, criminal through necessity----"

"No, not necessity. Nobody is necessitated to be criminal."

"You are simply mistaken. I repeat, criminal by necessity. So educated from childhood, that they know of no way to live, but by the beggar's trade, or pilferer's, or prostitute's crime. Such are the parents, such must be the children. There is no hope otherwise. They are sent out in infancy to beg, and early taught to 'pick up things;' the place of education is the street, the watch house, or city prison."

"Why don't their parents send them to school?"

"Why should they? They never went to such a place themselves, and care not that their children should go. They care for nothing but rum, and that the builders of prisons, and hangers of murderers, take care they shall have the means of getting. The imprisonment and hanging, is the sequence of the license system."

"But you were to tell us what you saw this evening."

"Human misery. The houses of the city poor. The locality is Cow Bay. It opens upon Anthony street at the North West angle of the Five Points."

The first _home_ we entered was a cellar room twelve by twenty feet, quite below the surface, and only just high enough to stand up under the beams of the floor over head, while at every step the water oozed up through the boards we trod upon. At one end was the narrow, muddy stairway and door, by which we entered, and at the other a fire-place.

On one side two windows with places for three panes of glass to each, gave all the light and ventilation afforded to the four families who occupied the room. These consisted of two men and their wives, two single women, an old woman and her three boys, and a young girl as a boarder. There were four sleeping places, called beds, upon forms, elevated above the floor, for none could sleep on that on account of the water.

"Do you always have the water as bad as it is now?" I inquired.

"Bad is it? An I wish then you could see it after a big rain, when the water is over the floor entirely fornent the the door."

"Have these women husbands?"

"These two with the young children have."

"What do they do for a living?"

"One of them jobs about--but he is on the Island now."

"What for?"

"Just nothing at all, yer honor, he is as kind a husband as ever lived, only when he takes a drop too much once in a while."

"Hould your tongue now, Ellen Maguire, you know your husband is drunk every time he can get liquor, and that is as often as he can coax anybody that has got money into that dirty hole at the corner--Cale Jones's grocery. He is a burner, sir?"

"A burner. What is that?"

"He asks some one to go and take a drink with him, and then tells him to call for what he likes, and so he drinks and drinks, thinking all the time it is a treat, till he gets ready to go, and then the fellow who keeps the shop stops him and makes him pay for all the liquor the company have drank."

"Don't he refuse?"

"What's the use? He is burnt, and must stand it. If he refuse, they will take his coat, or hat, or shoes. If he gets off with his breeches on he is lucky."

"What does this woman's husband do to support his family?"

"Deil a bit can I tell. It is not for me to pry into peoples' business who pay the rint like honest folks."

"The rent. How much rent do you pay for this room?"

"Fifty cents a week for each of us--that is two dollars in all, every Monday morning in advance; sure, you may well believe that, if you know Billy Crown, the agent. It's never a poor woman that he lets slip; if she was dying, and never a mouthful of bread or drop of anything in the house, the rint must be paid."

"Well, these women what do they do?"

"What should a lone woman do? she must live. There is but one way."

"Have you a husband?"

"The Lord be thanked, no. It is enough for me to live with me boys. What would I do if I had a drunken husband to support out of me arnings?"

Sure enough. What should any woman want of a drunken husband? Let us look above ground. Perchance misery only dwells in dark, low, damp cellars. Up, then, to the very garret of the same house. It is divided into three rooms, one is ten feet square with one window, without fire-place or stove. What may be inside we know not, for a strong hasp and padlock guard the treasure. Back of this, through a two feet wide passage, is another room, eight feet by twelve. This is partly under the roof, has a dilapidated fire-place and broken window. This is inhabited by a black man and his wife. There is a bed, a table, dishes and two chairs, and an air of neatness, contrasting strongly with the cellar.

By the side of this is another room inhabited by a negro and his white wife, and a white man and wife. Did you ever see four uglier beasts in one cage? The white man is a hyena; his wife a tiger; the negro a hippopotamus; his wife a sort of human tortoise; the dirt, representing the shell, out of which the vicious head poked itself, glaring at the intruders upon her premises, with a look that plainly said, Oh, how I should like to bite and claw you, and strip off those clean clothes, and spoil that face, and put out those eyes, and make ye as dirty and ugly and miserable as I am. The black man was social, courteous and intelligent. He was a cobbler, and diligently plied his hammer and awl. With a kind master and well cared for, he would be a faithful, good servant. He has no faculty to take care of himself. By nature the slave of one of nature's strongest passions, he has sunk down into slavery to this hard-shell woman, and the tool of his designing hyena and tiger room-mates. The white man looked as if he were counting the contents of our pockets, and what chance there would be for a grab at our watches.

The shape of this room was peculiar. Take a large watermelon, cut it in quarters, cut one of those across--the flesh sides will represent the floor and one wall--the cross-cut the end, where there is a fire-place--the rind is the roof and other side of the room, through which at the butt end, there is a window. There is no bedstead, or place for one. There is no table, or occasion for any. Two boxes and a stool serve for chairs. The bedding is very scarce, but the floor is of soft wood, and the weather is warm. Each of these rooms rents for three dollars a month, always in advance.

Now let us go down the rotten stairway to the next floor. Though what we have seen is bad, we may yet say:

"The worst is not So long as we can say, 'this is the worst.'"

What have we here?

Something worse. Yes, for coupled with poverty and crime, is fanatical hatred of everything that is not worse than itself. Let us rap at this door. A gruff woman's voice bids us enter. We are met by an insolent defiant scowl and an angry "what do you want here?"

"Good woman, is some one sick here?"

"Yes. What of that. Nobody wants the like of you, with your pious faces and 'good woman,' prowling about at this time of night. You're after nothing good, any one might swear that."

"Perhaps we can give you some good advice for your sick child."

"Give your advice when we ask it. Haven't we got Father Mullany to give us advice, and he a good doctor too. I tell you we don't want any miserable heretics in the house and me child a dying. And who have I to thank for it?"

"Surely, madam, we cannot tell. Perhaps you can, or your husband, where is he?"

If a dog were thrown among the whelps in a wolf's lair, it would not arouse the dam quicker than these words did this human she-wolf. She sprang towards us, foaming with rage. A stout cane in my strong right hand caught her eye, and she stood at bay.

"What was she so mad at you and your companion for? Did she know either of you?"

"She knew us by sight, or rather she knew him as one of the active helpers of the Missionary, Mr. Pease, the House of Industry, and the Five Points Mission. What more should she know to hate us? She knew we were not of her faith; that we believed not in the efficacy of holy water and confession, to work out sin; that we did not kneel and receive a consecrated wafer with 'extreme unction', and so she hated us with all the fervent rancor of religious hate. She hated us for our mission of good; for she knew we hated what she dearly loved--drunkenness and all its concomitant evils. She hated us with that envious hate of depravity, which would sink everything to its own level. She knew that we would take her dying child to a clean bed and airy room, and give it food and medicine, and nurse it into life, and she hated us for that."

"How could she? How could a mother be so wicked to her poor sick child? I am sure if I could not take care of mine, I would trust it with anybody who would save its life." Thus will say more than one Christian mother.

Think--be careful--be not uncharitable--good mother. Would you let it go with those who saved its life to be reared with them--taught their creed--perhaps to hate yours? Certainly if taught the principles of temperance--virtue--neatness--her child could not love its drunken mother, in her rags and dirt and life of sin.

"But then the child would be brought up by religious teachers, and taught to be a Christian."

Yes, a Protestant Christian; she is a good Catholic. Would you willingly give up your child if it were to be reared a Pagan, a Mahometan, or even a Jew?

"No! I would let it die."

There spoke the Five Points mother. Sooner than it should go into a Protestant house, she would see it die.

Alas! poor human nature; yes, poor human nature, sunk down into those depths of misery and degradation, yet every one of them are our brothers and sisters, who are rearing up children like themselves, as true as like produces like, while we look on, shrug our comfortably-wrapped shoulders, and "Thank God we are not like one of these," and yet never give, out of our abundance, one cent to make one of them like one of us.

"Well, what of her husband?"

"My husband, is it?" she said, as she stood glaring at us; "my husband? Go, look in your city prison, you old gray-headed villains, where ye or the likes of ye, murdered him without judge or jury. Did you try him for his life? No. Had he been a murderer? No. Had he done any crime? No. You licensed him to sell liquor, and he drank too much--I drank too much--what else can you expect, when you set fools to play with live coals, but they will burn themselves? What next? What is the natural consequence of getting drunk? A quarrel. I know it. Don't ask me what I get drunk for; I know you did not speak, but I saw it in your eye--yes, your eye--turn it away--I cannot bear it, it looks right into my soul. Don't look at me that way, or I shall cry, and I had rather die than do that. It would kill me to cry for such as you, who murdered my poor husband. You licensed him to sell rum, in the first place, to make other wives miserable with drunken husbands--mine was not drunken then, and I did not have to live in such a hole as this--look around you, ye murdering villains. What do you see?--poverty, filth, and rags; starvation, misery, crime--on that bed is my dying boy--that is nothing. Let him die, I am glad of it--the priest has made it all right with him. Now, look in that bed, rum-selling, licensing whelps that you are--that is worse than the dying boy in the other--see what we have bought with our money paid to your excise office. See what a mother is sunk to by rum. Yes, I do drink it--why do your eyes ask the question? I do drink, and will again. What else have I got to live for? What lower hole can I sink to? Me, a mother. A mother! Mother of that shameless girl, do you see her, there in that bed, before her mother's eyes?"

"Yes, and a pretty looking, bright-eyed girl she is."

"Bright-eyed. Yes, bright-eyed. I would to Heaven she had none--that she had been born blind. Her bright eyes have been her ruin--a curse to her and the mother that bore her--they are a curse to any poor girl among such villains as you are. Ye are men--how many hearts have you broken?--withered, trampled on?--there, go, go. I hate the sight of all men."

"Who is this man I see with your daughter; is he her husband?"

"Husband! husband! Do the like of her get husbands? Where is my husband?"

"We cannot tell, can you?"

"Tell! who can tell where a man is that died drunk--died--murdered in your man-killing city prison, and the priest not there to give him absolution. What had he done? What crime? Drank rum that you licensed him to sell--beat me because I drank too. What next? Next come your dirty police--the biggest scoundrels in the city--mad at my husband because he would not 'touch their palms,' and drag him to the Tombs--a right name--good name--true name--Tombs indeed--a tomb to my husband."

"Did he die there?"

"No! he was murdered there. Look here. Can you read? Yes, yes, I know ye can. So can I. Do you see that account of prisoners dying by suffocation--poisoned by carbonic acid gas--there, read it,"--and she thrust a crumpled paper before us--"read how ye reform drunkards--shut them up in prison cells, and in spite of their prayers, and groans, and dying cries for air, ye let them die. Are ye not murderers? Do you see that name? That is--that was my husband. Ha, ha, ha! Now, what is he, where is he? Don't answer--I know your answer; but if he is in hell, who sent him there? Who, who, who?"

And she sank down upon one of the pallets which were spread over the floor, in a paroxysm of wild, delirious grief and rage, speechless as her dying boy, lying unheeded and unheeding, by her side. What could we do? Nothing here; much elsewhere; and we looked up and registered a vow, that much as she hated us for what we had not done, yet had permitted our fellows to do without crying out against them, that she should be avenged. If we could do nothing here--if we could not pull down the sturdy oak by taking hold of its topmost branches, yet, although its mighty strength defies our weak efforts thus applied, we can and will dig around its roots--we will take away the life-sustaining earth--and that strong tree shall be made to feel our power--it shall wither, dry up, and die, and time shall rot down its strong trunk, and the place that once knew it, shall know it no more.

This then is our pledge, made over that dying boy, and, worse than by murder, widowed mother, and here now we redeem it. Here we expose the hydra-headed monster--the orphan and widow-maker--the property, health, and virtue-destroyer. Sad, harrowing as these scenes of wretchedness and misery are, they must be laid open to the gaze of the world. "Wounds must be seen to be healed." Weak nerves tremble at the idea that physicians cut and carve the dead, talking, aye laughing, as freely over the quiet heart and still nerves in the dissecting-room, as the butcher over his beef upon the market house block; yet without the dissecting of one and butchering of the other, how should the maimed be healed, or meat-eating multitude be fed? So let us on with our panorama of scenes from life in New York.

Let us open this door. Ah! we have been here before.

The room is seven by twelve feet, under the roof, which comes down at one end within a foot of the floor. There is a broken, dirty, window in the roof, at the right hand of the door as we enter on the side. No fire-place or stove, no table, only two broken chairs--a very old bureau--a dilapidated trunk--a band-box--a few articles of female apparel--some poor dishes and a few cooking utensils--used upon a little portable furnace standing in the room--a poor old bedstead and straw bed in one corner--a child's cot and a doll; and yet the only occupant of the room is an old negro man, who sits of nights upon cold stones, crying Hot Corn. We look about wonderingly, peering in here and there, but except the old man we see no one.

"She gone, massa, clean gone--cry old eyes out when I come home next day arter dat one, you know massa, which one dis child mean--sad day--don't like to mention him, massa--give me chaw terbacca, massa--come home and find her and little sis--nice child dat--"

"You found her."

"No sir, found her gone--done gone entirely--key in old place where I knew where to find him--everything all here--no word for old Plato--what I give to see her once more--to see little Sissee--Oh that I knew where she was. Oh, oh, oh."

"And would to Heaven we could tell what has become of her."

"Who?" said the lady who had been listening with intense interest to my narrative.

"True, I had forgotten to tell you that we stood in the chamber where little Katy died. Where that last sweet kiss of an angel was given--where the candle seemed to the dying innocent to go out--where she said, 'Good bye--mother--don't drink--any more--good b--' but before the word was finished, there was another angel added to the heavenly host around the throne of God."

It was here that the scene, which the artist has so touchingly illustrated upon the opposite page, transpired. Turn your thoughts a moment from this page to that and look upon the picture. Turn back to