Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated Part 11

"Will that?"

"It did one of my friends."

"Well, then, go and bring that friend here; let me see and hear how much it saved him, and then I will make up my mind what to do. If I can do you any good, I want to do it."

"My friend is at work--he has got a good job and several hands working for him, and is making money, and won't quit till night. Shall I come this evening?"

"Yes, I will stay at home and wait for you."

He little expected to see him again, but about eight o'clock the servant said that man and his girl, with a _gentleman_ and _lady_, were waiting in the reception room. He told him to ask the lady and gentleman to walk up to the parlor and sit a moment, while he sent the candidates for marriage away, being determined never to unite another drunken couple, not dreaming that there was any sympathy between the parties. But they would not come up; they wanted to see that couple married. So he went down, and found the squalidly wretched pair, that had been there in the morning, in conversation, and apparently very friendly and intimate, with the lady and gentleman. He had the appearance of a well dressed laboring man, for he wore a fine black coat, silk vest, gold watch-chain, clean white s.h.i.+rt and cravat, polished calf-skin boots; and his wife was just as neat and tidily dressed as anybody's wife, and her face beamed with intelligence, and the way in which she clung to the arm of her husband, as she seemed to shrink out of sight, told that she was a loving as well as a pretty wife.

"This couple," said the gentleman, "have come to be married."

"Yes, I know it," said Mr. P., "and I have refused. Look at them; do they look like fit subjects for such a holy ordinance? G.o.d never intended those, whom he created in his own image, should live in matrimony like this man and woman. I cannot marry them."

"Cannot! Why not? You married us when we were worse off--more dirty--worse clothed, and more intoxicated."

"The woman shrunk back a little more out of sight. I saw she trembled violently, and put her clean cambric handkerchief up to her eyes."

"What could it mean? Married them when worse off? Who were they?"

"Have you forgotten us?" said the woman, taking my hands in hers, and dropping on her knees; "have you forgotten drunken Tom and Mag? We have never forgotten you, but pray for you every day!"

"If you have forgotten them, you have not forgotten the two-penny marriage. No wonder you did not know us. I told Matilda she need not be afraid, or ashamed, if you did know her. But I knew you would not. How could you? We were in rags and dirt then. Look at us now. All your work, sir. All the blessing of the pledge and that marriage, and that good advice you gave us. Look at this suit of clothes, and her dress--all Matilda's work, every st.i.tch of it. Come and look at our house, as neat as she is. Everything in it to make a comfortable home; and, oh! sir, there is a cradle in our bedroom. Five hundred dollars already in bank, and I shall add as much more next week when I finish my job. So much for one year of a sober life, and a faithful, honest, good wife. Now, this man is as good a workman as I am, only he is bound down with the galling fetters of drunkenness, and living with a woman as I did, only worse, for they have two children. What will they be, if they chance to live, and grow up to womanhood in Cow Bay? Now he has made up his mind to try to be a man again--he is a beast now--he thinks that he can reform just as well as me; but he thinks he must take the pledge of the same man, and have his first effort sanctified with the same blessing, and then, with a good resolution, and Matilda and me to watch over them, I do believe they will succeed."

So they did. So may others, by the same means.

They were married, solemnly, impressively, solemnly married; and pledged to total abstinence in the most earnest manner; and promised most faithfully, not only to keep the pledge, but to do unto others, as Elting had done unto them. Both promises you have seen that they have kept well.

As they were parting, Elting slipped something into Nolan's hand, and told him to pay the marriage fee.

"I thought," said the missionary, "of the two pennies, and expected nothing more, and therefore was not disappointed when he handed me the two reddish-looking coins. I thought, well, they are bright, new looking cents, at any rate, and I hope their lives will be like them. I was in hopes that it might have been a couple of dollars this time, but I said nothing, and we parted with a mutual G.o.d bless you. When I went up stairs, I tossed the coin into my wife's lap, with the remark, 'two pennies again, my dear.'"

"Two pennies! Why, husband, they are eagles--real golden eagles. What a deal of good they will do. What blessings have followed that act."

And what blessings did follow the last one; will always follow the pledge faithfully kept; will always follow a well formed, faithfully kept union, even if it is a "two-penny marriage."

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 s.h.i.+lling. 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 s.h.i.+lling 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 quant.i.ties 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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; s.h.i.+vering 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 appet.i.tes 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 G.o.d, 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 Munic.i.p.al Authorities of this Police-hunting, and Prison-punis.h.i.+ng 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-punis.h.i.+ng.

"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 d.a.m.n 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?