Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated Part 37

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 ill.u.s.trating 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 fl.u.s.teration? 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. G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+ft the responsibility; certainly I had not, could not, would not father them.

So I sat munching and musing over my bread and b.u.t.ter 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 proteges?"

"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. n.o.body 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 prost.i.tute'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 gla.s.s 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?"