CHAPTER X.

THE SERVANT GIRL’S “FELLER”

The millionaire and the shivering beggar at his gates may differ in every other respect, but they have one feeling in common. Both desire to live, and to live one must eat. The most important concern of mankind, then, is to get something to eat. It is open to all to secure this desideratum by labor of one kind or another. Men choose different avocations to this end. One goes down in a drain at 7 o’clock in the morning and throws dirt till six at night, and gets a dollar and a quarter for it. Another creeps down to a store in the dark and silent hours of the morning, and by the aid of a jimmey and a bit and brace secures a sum varying in amount from a few dollars up to several thousands. These are representatives of two great classes in the community—the toilers of the day and the prowlers of the night. There are all degrees of prosperity in the ranks of the former and all depths of vileness and degradation in those of the latter. During the day they are distinctly apart. The banker, the lawyer, and the shop-man pass the gambler and the procuress on the streets and know them not. But when night assumes his dim dominion over the world smug respectability may be seen watching with bated breath

THE RATTLING OF THE DICE

upon the table or dallying with sin in the by-ways of the city.

Thus they sometimes mingle, surreptitiously and fearfully.

The night hawks! They are to be found in every great city. They are the excrescences of civilization. In cities of great population they are a constant menace to the public peace. Toronto is, perhaps, no worse or no better in this respect than other cities of equal population. That we have a sufficient number of these birds of darkness the police assert, and the newspaper man, whose duties take him occasionally to their haunts, knows. They are a strange race with a terrible philosophy.

“Why don’t you brace up?” was asked of a young man who looked pretty miserable in the early morning. He was evidently suffering from the effects of his last night’s orgies.

“I wish somebody would give me a chance to brace up,” was the answer given, with a weary smile. “I know a nice bar where we could both brace up.”

“Well, now, joking aside, you know your present life is killing you. You are still a young man; you have a good trade. Why don’t you get to work and avoid all this trouble. Compare yourself with that young fellow on the other side of the street with his dinner can. His eye is clear; his tongue is clean and his lips are moist. Are yours?”

“That’s very well put, but that story has got two sides. I’m feelin’ a little tough now; but by noon I wouldn’t change places with Vanderbilt. Ten minutes after I get my first rye I’ll be in as good shape as the coon with the dinner-pail; then he’ll have to sweat and work all day while I lay off beside a cool keg of lager or other choice stimilants. You can’t preach to me about

THE ADVANTAGES OF HONEST LABOR.

I have tried it. You work nine hours a day and get spoken to like a dog. For this you get three meals a day and a bunk to sleep in at night. Your first meal you haven’t time to eat, the second is cold and tastes of the tin pail in which it is carried, and the third is a mess made up of what was left by your boardin’-house missus and her youngsters at their last meal. I tell you I may not get my meals reg’lar, but they’re daisies when I do.”

It was hard to decide what to say to talk like this. It was suggested, however, that in one plan of existence there was a prospect of long life and the respect of your fellowmen; in the other there was simply death and disgrace.

“Respect be d⸺d. The kind of respect a man gets who has no money is not worth much. If I cracked a bank safe, and snaked a million dollars out of it, I’d get all the respect from my neighbors that any man gets. As for long life, I wouldn’t want to live long if I had to work 60 hours a week for the pleasure of eating three poor meals a day.”

This, or something similar, is the philosophy of the hawks. It is summed up in the phrase “a short life and a merry one.” It is a rule of life which makes a man, presumably civilized, more dangerous than a savage. He has the instincts of the savage combined with more knowledge and power for evil. It is a philosophy which every right-thinking man should do his little all to combat. It aims at the foundations of society, and if its falsity could be made apparent in words of fire, the human family would be a gainer thereby.

It is surely not making too bold an assertion to say that the most hardened enemy of society was

ONCE A GUILELESS CHILD.

He or she must have at some particular time taken his or her first step on the road to infamy. Some particular form of allurement must have caught the youthful eye and dazzled the foolish brain. What are these allurements? Can our youth be made to recognize them and see whereunto they lead? We think they can. It would be well to show that the roses of sin bear fearful thorns, that the fruits of mere worldly pleasure turn to bitter ashes on the lips. The series of articles which are being published in these columns have this end in view. By showing how the vicious live we expect to show that the person who chooses to tread the way of vice will find it broad enough in all conscience with a-plenty of wayfarers in it, but he will also find that the thorns and cruel stones increase with each mile, until its final pages are trodden with bleeding feet and washed with unavailing tears. It can be shown, we think, that all the vicious classes simmer down at last to the same shuffling, shambling level. The young gambler, his tailor’s pride, degenerates into the sniveling aged tramp, who in fluttering rags begs for a crust of bread at the poorhouse door, or else his elegant limbs wear penitential uniform behind the prison bars. The descent of the wicked woman is still more awful, still more shocking.

In these sketches our readers may hope, not for cooked reports to support any particular view of life and its relations, but for actual facts witnessed by our own staff, or else the views of people having knowledge or experience of the things whereof they speak. It is better in these things to speak so plainly that everybody may see where the disease lies, and thereby form a better idea of how a remedy may be applied.