Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated Part 4

"Yes, yes!" I hear you cry--"it is a watchword--a glorious watchword, that bids us do or die--until the smoking hot, fiery furnace-like gates of h.e.l.l, like this one now yawning before us, shall cease to be licensed by a Christian people, or send delicate little girls at midnight through the streets, crying 'Hot corn,' to support a drunken mother, whose first gla.s.s was taken in a 'fas.h.i.+onable saloon,' or first-cla.s.s liquor-selling hotel."

"Hot corn," then, be the watchword of all who would rather see the grain fed to the drunkard's wife and children, than into the insatiable hot maw of the whiskey still.

Let your resolutions grow hot and strong, every time you hear this midnight city cry, that you will devote, if nothing more,

"Three grains of corn, mother, Only three grains of corn,"

towards the salvation of the thousand equally pitiable objects as the little girl whose wailing cry has been the inciting cause of this present dish of "Hot Corn--smoking hot!"

CHAPTER III.

WILD MAGGIE.

"A woman sometimes scorns what best contents her."

It is human nature to scorn many things which would content us--which do content us after we once taste them.

One of the reasons why the vicious scorn those who would make them better; why they scorn to change their present wretched life, or miserable habitations, is because they know not what would best content them.

When that missionary first located his mission to the poorest of New York city poor, the drunkards, thieves, and prost.i.tutes of the Five Points, he was scorned by those he came to save. He and his mission were hated with all the bitter hate which the evil mind oft feels for the good, made still more bitter by the sectarian venom of ignorant Catholics towards the hated heretic Protestants. Every annoyance that low cunning could invent was thrown in his way.

Feeling the inefficiency of the system so long and so uselessly practiced, of giving Bibles or tracts to such people, to be sold or p.a.w.ned for a tenth part of their value, he began a new system. This was to give employment to the idle, to teach all, who would learn, how to work, how to earn their own living, and that industry would bring more content than drunkenness and its concomitant vices. Though stolen fruit may be sweet, the bread of toil is sweeter, and he would teach them how to gain it.

One of the first efforts made was work for the needle; because that was the most easily started, can be carried on with less capital, and, on the other hand, produces the least capital--or rather poorest pay to those who labor. Yet it is better than idleness, and he soon found willing hands to work, after he opened his shop, and invited all who would conform to the rules, and were willing to earn their bread, rather than beg or steal it, to come and get work--such as coa.r.s.e s.h.i.+rts and pants--work that they could do, many of them with skill and great rapidity, but such as they could not get trusted with at any common establishment--the very name of the place where they lived being sufficient to discredit them--so that security, which they could not give, for the return of the garments, closed the door against their very will to work.

Another discouraging thing against the very poor who did occasionally get "slop shop work," arose from some gross, cruel, wicked, downright robbery, perpetrated upon "sewing women" by some incarnate fiend in the clothing trade. The difficulty to get work, the miserably poor pay offered to those who

"St.i.tch, st.i.tch, st.i.tch, Band and gusset and seam, Seam and gusset and band, With eyes and lamp both burning dim, With none to lend a helping hand,"

is enough to sink stouter hearts than those which beat in misery's bosom.

Sunk in misery, poverty, crime, filth, degradation, want; neglected by all the world; hated by those who should love; trodden down by those who should, if they did a Christian duty, lift up; living in habitations such as--but no matter, you shall go with me, by and by, to see where they live--how could they lift themselves up, how could they be industrious and improve their condition, how could they accept bibles and tracts, with any promise of good?

So thought the missionary; and so he set himself about giving them the means to labor, with a hope and sure promise of reward.

Some of those who sent him there to preach salvation to the heathen of the Five Points differed with him--differ still--thinking that a Christian minister degrades himself when he goes into a "slop shop" to give out needle-work to misery's household--or attempts to teach industry to idle, vicious children, or reform degraded women, by teaching them the ways of living without sin, without selling their bodies to buy bread, or in their despair, to exchange the last loaf for rum.

So he opened a shop--now enlarged into a "House of Industry"--and soon found his reward. But he was annoyed, hated, persecuted, beaten--but G.o.d and a good will conquered.

Among other petty, vexatious trifles--it is trifles that annoy--a little girl, in rags and filth, with a mat of soft "bonny brown hair," no doubt well colonized, bare-headed and bare-footed, in cold or heat, used to come every day to the door, ringing her shrill musical voice through the open way, through the crack or key-hole, if it was shut, calling him all sorts of opprobrious names, mixed with all sorts of sentences of Catholic hatred to Protestantism, that showed that she was herself a missionary from adults of evil minds. Then she would call over the names of the inmates, with all their catalogue of crimes, giving little sc.r.a.ps of their history, and their hateful nick-names--singing some of the songs they used to sing in their drunken debauches at Pete Williams's; and such a voice as she had would have won her wors.h.i.+ppers in high life, and she had been with them and of them. And her features and blue eyes were as beautiful as her voice was strong and sweet; and there she would tell him, and the crowd of idlers who came to listen, and laugh, and shout at her cunning tricks and evident annoyances, for what purpose he wanted all them old ----'s; and so it went on, day after day. All attempts to get rid of her were of no avail. Scolding, threatening, were alike unheeded. "Catch me first," was her answer. Then he followed her to her home, to expostulate with her parents. Vain effort!

Up Anthony street to Centre; come with me, reader, let us look at that home!

There is a row of dens all along upon the east side of that street, full of those whom hope has forsaken, and misery has in her household. Above ground, below ground, in cellar or garret, back room or front, black and white, see how they swarm at door and window, in hall and stairway, and out upon the sidewalk, all day in idleness, all night in mischief, crime, and sin.

Elbow your way along among the standing, and step over the prostrate drunken or sleeping women and children along the side-walk. Stop here--here is a sort of hole-in-the-ground entrance to a long, dark, narrow alley, let us enter. "No, no, not there," you will exclaim.

"Surely human beings cannot live there?"

Yes, they do. That girl has just gone down there, and we will follow.

"Better not go there," says a young urchin in the crowd; "a man was stabbed down there last night."

Encouraging; but we enter, and grope along about a hundred feet, and a door opens on the right, the girl we have followed darts out, up like a cat, over a high fence, on to a roof, up that, into a garret window, with a wild laugh and ringing words, "You didn't do it this time, you old Protestant thief, did you? You want to catch me, to send me to 'the Island.' I know you, you old missionary villain you. I heard Father Phelan tell what you want to do with the poor folks at the Points; you want to turn them out of house and home, and build up your grand houses, and make them all go to hear you preach your lies; you do, you old heretic, but you didn't catch me. I'll plague you again to-morrow."

We entered her home--the home that the missionary was trying to turn her out of. Can it be possible that human nature can cling to such a home, and refuse to be turned out, or occupy a better one.

The room is one of a "row," along the narrow dark corridor we entered, half sunken below the ground, with another just such another row overhead, each ten or twelve feet square, with a door and one little window upon this narrow alley which is the only yard; at the end of which there is a contagion-breeding temple of Cloacina, common to all.

In "the house" that we enter, a man lies helplessly drunk upon a dirty rug on the floor; a woman, too much overcome to rise, sits propped up in one corner. There is altogether, perhaps, fifty cents worth of furniture and clothing in the room.

And this is the loved home of one of the smartest, brightest, most intelligent little girls in this G.o.d-forsaken neighborhood.

The missionary made known his errand and was told that he might do anything he pleased with the girl, if he would catch her and tame her.

"For," said her mother, "what do we want with her at home--_at home_!--She is never here, only to sleep."

Only to sleep! Where did she sleep? On the damp, bare floor, of course, where else could she sleep in that home?

The next morning various devices were contrived to catch her, to force her into a better home. All failed.

When did force ever succeed with one of her s.e.x?

If the serpent had _bid_ our first mother to eat the apple, she would have thrown it down the villain's throat, splitting his forked tongue in its pa.s.sage.

Finally it was arranged that a boy, noted as "a runner," should stand behind the door, and when she came with her jibes, sometimes provoking mirth, and sometimes ire, he should jump out and catch her.

"Catch me if you can!" and away went she, away went he, under this cart and over that. Now he will have her--his hand is outstretched to seize his chase--vain hope--she drops suddenly in his path, and he goes headlong down a cellar. When he came up there was a great shout, and a great many dirty bare-footed girls about, but that one was nowhere in sight. So back he goes, enters the door; and a wild laugh follows him close upon his heels.

"You didn't catch me this time, did you? Don't you want another race?

Ha, ha, ha."

And away she went, singing:

"Up, up, and away with the rising sun, The chase is now before ye; Up, up and away with hound and gun, The chase is now before ye."

It was a chase that cunning must catch, strength could not win.

Everybody said she never could be caught and tamed. She had run wild all her young years. She was not by nature vicious, but she was most incorrigibly mischievous. She was, so everybody said, and he ought to know, beyond the hope of redemption. Yet everybody was mistaken. Reader, you already know this girl, for this is "Wild Maggie, of the Five Points." This is the kind, sweet, tender-hearted Margaret, you have read of in a former chapter, ministering to the wants of that poor widow and dest.i.tute children, living in comfort, with neatness and industry, and her father, in a happy home; and that father the poor, miserable, wretched, besotted drunkard, whom we found in that wretched hole, in that dark alley in Centre street.

What a change!

It was a change for good. It was a deed of mercy to redeem such a child as this from a course of life that has but one phase--one worse than useless object--one wretched termination.

What magic power had wrought this change?

Words of kindness, charity, hope, teachings of the happiness attendant on virtue, religion, industry; by these the worst can be redeemed.