Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated Part 46

"The result need not be told, only that he died and she lived.

"When I made these discoveries from an overheard conversation, I ordered the vile woman from my house.

"'My house, my house, ha, ha, you poor simpleton. Every article in this house and every cent of money that you or your husband has on earth belongs to me, and these are the papers.

"'Now if you behave yourself you can stay here, if not, you will have to tramp, both of you.'

"She shook the papers in my face, and laughed at my look of fear and astonishment. To finish my agony, when I began to talk something about the rights of an English wife, she coolly told me that she had just as good a right to my husband as I had, for he had one wife when I married him, and that rendered my marriage a nullity. What a shock for a wife--to hear that she is no wife, or if she is, the wife of a robber, adulterer, and murderer.

"I heard all this with a sort of indifference foreign to my very nature.

It was well that I did, for it enabled me to perfect my plans, and carry them out with a degree of coolness worthy of a better purpose. I had been promising for some time to visit a friend for a week, and I set about packing up for the journey at once. I said not one word to De Vrai of what I heard, nor gave him one look of reproof. Fortune had made me acquainted with the secret hiding-place of the money this guilty pair had obtained from their poor victim, and I did not feel any compunctions of conscience in taking it from them. In three days afterwards I was in Paris. Here I lived a few months a wretched life of dissipation, and then De Vrai, tracked me to my hiding-place and I had to fly once more; this time across the ocean.

"I had five hundred dollars when I arrived in this city. What might I not have done with that sum, if I had used it prudently? What I did do, I must tell, that it may be a warning to others. It would be a source of consolation to me if I knew that the follies of my life could be illuminated and set up as a beacon light to my fellow creatures, to save them from the quicksands of dissipation upon which I have been wrecked--wrecked by my own folly and foolish pride.

"It was pride, foolish wicked pride, that led me to go to a fas.h.i.+onable hotel, and put up, with my two children and nurse, as Madame De Vrai, from Paris. How soon five hundred dollars melt away, even with prudent living, at a New York hotel. I did not live prudently. I drank to excess, gave late suppers, and gambled. This could not last long, though many hundreds of the dollars worse than wasted in those few weeks, were won from others equally guilty of this besetting wickedness and folly with myself. Such a life could not last. My first step down was to a cheap lodging in Crosby street. I cannot tell how I lived there. I only know that my valuables, my clothes, everything went to the p.a.w.nbroker, and I went to that wretched hole where you first saw me in Cow Bay, from whence I drove my poor little Katy out in the streets at midnight, to sell Hot Corn. It was there that my poor child died. It was there that you received her dying blessing, and I her dying forgiveness for all the wrongs that I had heaped upon her poor innocent head. It was then by her death that I was awakened to consciousness and I felt and saw my own deep soul and body destroying degradation. It was through her death and translation to a home in heaven, that I have obtained a hope that my Father may forgive what my child has forgiven, and that, I may yet see her again. It was Him, it must have been Him that opened your ear to that little plaintive cry of 'Hot Corn,' that rose up through your window on its way to the home of angels watching over a child whom her mother had forsaken.

"It was His power--no earthly power could have aroused my mind from its lethargy, that awakened me one moment before it was too late. It was a bitter trial, but nothing else but the death of that sweet child would have been sufficient to save her wicked mother; I cannot mourn her loss, because I feel that she is now so much better off than while singing her nightly cry through the streets, of 'Hot Corn, Hot Corn, here's your nice hot corn!' Speaking of singing, have you seen the new song, just published, called 'The Dying Words of Little Katy, or Will He Come?"

"Oh it is beautiful. Here it is, do read it:--

"Here's hot corn, nice hot corn!" a voice was crying!

Sweet hot corn, sweet hot corn! the breeze is sighing!

Come buy, come buy--the world's unfeeling-- How can she sell while sleep is stealing?

"Hot corn, come buy my nice hot corn!"

All alone, all alone, she sat there weeping; While at home, while at home, her sister's sleeping, "Come buy, come buy, I'm tired of staying; Come buy, come buy, I'm tired of saying, Hot corn, come buy my nice hot corn!"

Often there, often there, she sat so drear'ly With one thought, for she loved her sister dearly: Did'st hate, did'st hate--how could she ever, How could she hate her mother?--never.

"Hot corn, come buy my nice hot corn!"

Often there, often there, while others playing, Hear the cry, "buy my corn," she's ever praying.

"Pray buy, pray buy, kind hearted stranger, One ear, then home, I'll brave the danger; Hot corn, come buy my nice hot corn!"

Now at home, now at home, her cry is changing!

"Will he come, will he come?" while fever's raging.

She cries, she cries, "pray let me see him; Once more, once more, pray let me see him.

Hot corn, he'll buy my nice hot corn!"

"Will he come, will he come?" she's constant crying, "Will he come, will he come?" poor Katy's dying.

"'Twas he, 'twas he, kind words was speaking Hot corn, hot corn, while I was seeking Hot corn, who'll buy my nice hot corn?"

"Midnight there, midnight there, my hot corn crying, Kindly spoke, first kind words, they stop'd my sighing.

That night, that night, when sleep was stealing, Kind words, kind words--my heart was healing; Hot corn, he'll buy my nice hot corn!"

"Will he come, will he come?"--weak hands are feeling!

"He has come, he has come--I see him kneeling-- One kiss--the light--how dim 'tis growing-- I thank--'tis dark--good bye--I'm going-- Hot corn--no more shall cry--hot corn!!!"

Drop a tear, drop a tear, for she's departed, Drop a tear, drop a tear, poor broken hearted, Now pledge, now pledge, the world is crying, Take warning, warning, by Katy's dying, "Hot corn, who'll buy my nice hot corn?"

"The music of this, as it is arranged for the piano, is one of the sweetest, plaintive things you ever heard."

"And besides that, there are a good many other songs and tales, so Agnes tells me, already written, which never would have been if my poor child had not been called away from her home of misery here on earth to one made for the innocent and good beyond the grave. Who knows how much good all those songs and stories may do in the world, to save others from the road which I took to destruction!"

"Oh, if the wretched, awful misery occasioned by rum, which I alone have seen, could be pictured to the world, it does seem to me that no sane man or woman could ever look upon the picture and live, without becoming so affected that they would foreswear all intoxicating beverages for ever afterwards."

"Oh, sir, I know that I am now on my death bed, and I feel as though I was talking from the spirit world, and I do pray you to tell my fellow creatures, one and all--tell my own s.e.x who are just beginning this life of temptation, degradation, sin, shame, woe, and death, what it brought me to, what it will bring all to, sooner or later, who, indulge as I did, first in wine, and, finally, in anything, everything that could sink reason into forgetfulness."

Reader, have I obeyed that dying injunction?

CHAPTER XVIII.

JULIA ANTRIM, AND OTHER OLD ACQUAINTANCES.

"Should old acquaintance be forgot?"

"There is a lost sheep returned to the fold."

If those who would reform the vicious, knew the power of love and kind words towards the poor fallen creatures who abound in our city, and how much stronger they are than prison bars, how much more powerful than handcuffs, fetters and whip lashes, we should soon see the spirit of reformation hovering over us like the guardian angel sent to save a city that should be found to contain only five righteous persons.

My readers may remember the slight glimpse they had of the face of Julia Antrim, on two occasions--once as a street walker, only thirteen years old, dressed in borrowed clothes, or rather in garments furnished by one of the beldams who keep the keys of our numerous city pandemoniums, where innocence is entrapped, and virtue sold at a discount; and again a year or two later, when the fiend who said "our trade," laughed to see her dragged out of one of the underground dens where demons dwell, where rum is sold and souls destroyed, on her way to prison, and the termination of a career, to which one half, at least, arrive at, who take the first step--false step--in the same road.

In the morning she was "sent up:" a short phrase which means imprisonment for six months in the city penitentiary. Penitentiary!!

What is a penitentiary? A place of repentance and reformation.

Ours is a place to harden young offenders, or rum-made criminals--to make them worse rather than better. It made Julia Antrim worse. It was the work of the missionary, and the benevolent heart of Mr. Lovetree, and the kind words of Mrs. May and Stella, that effected what dungeons, fetters whips, and harsh language could not.

"Oh!" said Mrs. Morgan to me one evening, "such a story as my uncle has been telling me; do tell him, uncle, about one of those 'Five Point girls,' rescued from one of those miserable dens."

"You remember the girl," said he, "that you saw dragged out of the cellar for picking her paramour's pocket? Come with me and you shall see her and hear her own story. Athalia, come put on your hat and go with us. You know how glad Mrs. May and Stella always are to see you."

They were so this evening. Stella was in the front shop busy with her pins and needles, threads and tapes, and all the numerous little articles of necessity which go to make up an a.s.sortment, for which she had a demand that not only kept her busy, but also a fine bright active little boy. He is on the road to wealth and manhood now. He was on the road to ruin once. He was the son of a drunken father, who taught him to "prig" and sell the stolen articles for rum. The reader has seen him before. Would you like to know where? Turn back to page 30--look at that picture of the fireman rescuing two children from the flames. This bright boy is the child of drunken Bill Eaton. How Stella's eyes did sparkle as she saw us enter; far more than they would to see her best customer, for now she saw her best friend, her kind patron, who gave her the means to gain good customers.

"Oh, mother, mother, here is Mr. Lovetree and Mrs. Morgan, and that other gentleman!"

Then Mrs. May's eyes sparkled, for "she was so glad to see us"--she was always glad to see us. She was very busy in the little back shop, working away, and she had two very neat-looking industrious girls at work with her. We have seen both of them before. One of them for the first time on the steps of the Bank of the Republic, clothed in a poor dirty ragged dress, with that same little boy, sickly and pale, leaning upon his sister for support, and keeping her company as the two wandered through the streets, making midnight melodious with that ever pealing summer cry, of, "Hot corn, hot corn, here's your nice hot corn, smoking hot, smoking hot, just from the pot, all hot, hot, hot!"

She will sing, it no more. She is in a better situation now for a little girl than midnight street rambling; that is not the best school for young girls--we have seen how near the brink of ruin it led Sally Eaton.

She was rescued just in time--just before she was lost. Two great calamities fell upon her in one night. Her father was killed, and her mother's house was burned, leaving the poor widow and her two children in the street, naked, except one garment, amid the crowd that came to look upon what she then thought the wreck of all hope. It proved her greatest blessing; for in that crowd were those who took her in, and clothed and fed, and sent her children to school, and taught her girl how to work; and, finally, placed her as a help to another widow, where she will soon learn and earn enough to help herself. The other girl, who is now working with her old companion, was once her street a.s.sociate in rags and wretchedness; afterwards, her envied, because better clothed, acquaintance. We saw her too, upon the same evening that we first saw the little Hot Corn girl driven away from her hard seat upon those cold stone steps--less cold than the heart of the great world towards its outcast population. We saw her again, just where we then knew that her course of life would lead her--to intoxication,--wretchedness--crime--prisons, and--no, she stopped just short of death, and returned to virtue, industry, and happiness.

After the heartfelt, happiness-giving congratulations of Mrs. May, Stella, Sally Eaton, and "Brother Willie," were over, I turned to a nice, modest-looking young girl and said, "and who is this? What is your name?"

"Julia Antrim, sir."