Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated Part 5

How?

"Finding every effort unavailing," said the missionary, "I changed my tactics. I was busy one morning in the workshop, laying out work, when I cast my eye towards the open door, and there saw Wild Maggie, waiting for a word upon which she might retort. Without seeming to notice her, I said, loud enough for her to hear, 'Oh, how I wish I had some one to help me lay out this work.' There was a look of intelligence spreading over her face, which seemed to say as plainly as looks could say, 'I could do that.'

"'Will you?' I said; she started as though I was mentally replying to her pa.s.sing thoughts.

"She did not say, 'Yes,' but she thought it. I had touched a chord.

"'Maggie,' said I, with all the tone and looks of kindness I could command, 'Maggie, my girl, come in; you can help me; I know you are smart, come, I will give you sixpence if you will help me a little while.' She stepped into the door, looked behind it suspiciously, and started back. She remembered the trap. 'No, I won't. You want to catch me and send me to the Island. I know you, you old Protestant. Old Kate told me yesterday, that you had sent off Liz. Smith, Nance Hastings, and hump-backed Lize, and a lot of girls.'

"'So I have, but not to the Island. They have all got good places where they are contented and happy. But I don't send anybody away that don't want to go. I won't send you away, nor won't keep you if you don't want to stay.'

"'Will you let me come out again, if I come in, when I am a mind to?'

"'Yes, certainly, my dear child.'

"My dear child!" Where has she ever heard those words? In former days, before her father and mother had sunk so low, as they now are, when she used to go to school, to church, and sabbath-school, and wear clothes, such as she was not ashamed of. Want of clothing will sink the highest to the lowest state of rags, and dirt, and misery.

"'Will you swear, that you will let me come out, and you won't beat me.

Limping Bill and one-eyed Luce, his woman, says, you licked little Sappy till she died.'

"'They are great liars.'

"'So they say you are. That you preach nothing but lies.'

"'Well, I won't lie to you, Maggie, and I won't whip you, but I won't swear. Did you ever know any good man swear?'

"She thought a moment, and replied, 'Well, I don't know--I know them that swear the most will lie. Will you let the door stand open? If you will I will come in?'

"'Yes,' and in she came.

"'Now, what do you want I should do?'

"'There, do you look at me. I am laying out s.h.i.+rts for the women to sew.

That pile, there, that is the body; this, the sleeves; that, the collar; these, the wristbands; these, the gussets; here are six b.u.t.tons, and here is the thread to make it, and then it will be a s.h.i.+rt when made.

Now we roll it up and tie a string around it; now it is ready to give out. Now, you can do that just as well as I can, and you don't know how much it will help me.'

"'Yes, I can, and I can beat you.'

So she could. She was just as quick at work as she was at play and mischief, and the piles disappeared under her nimble fingers much more rapidly than they did under his, and so he told her. Who had ever praised her work before, though all had "her deviltry?"

The spirit of reformation had already commenced its glorious work.

"When that job was finished, she turned her sweet blue eyes upon me, with an expression which said as plain as eyes can speak, 'I am sorry that job is done. I like that, can't you give me another?'

"There was no other which she could do just then, but she said, 'What shall I do now?'"

"Well, Maggie, I have no more work for you to-day, but here is your sixpence, I promised you, and here are some cakes; come again to-morrow, you can help me every day. I like your help."

She did not want to go. She had tasted of a fruit which had opened her eyes, and she would fain clothe herself in fig leaves, so they hid the deformity of dirt, and rags, and sin. Wild as the fawn, as easily as the fawn subdued. At the approach of man, that timid animal bounds into the thickest brake and hides away; but once in the hands of man, it turns and follows him to his home, licking his hand as though it were with its own dam. So was Wild Maggie tamed.

"What shall I do now?"

What should she do? A score of little girls were huddling around the door, for the news was out that Maggie, Wild Maggie, had been caught and caged, and they wanted to see "what would come of it."

"A thought struck me," said the missionary. "I asked her if she could read. Yes, and write. Had she been to school? Yes. Then you shall play school. You shall have these benches, and you shall call in those children, and you shall be the teacher, and so you may play school."

Was there ever a happier thought engendered. Maggie was delighted, the children came rus.h.i.+ng in, ready for "a play never before enacted in this theatre."

For an hour or more she plied her task diligently, and it was astonis.h.i.+ng with what effect. How she reduced her unruly materials to order. How she made them say, yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am, to their school mistress. How she made them sit and "look like somebody." Taught this one his A B Cs, and that one to spell B-a-k-e-r. How she told this one to wash his face, next time he came to school, and that one if she had any better clothes, to wear them. Poor Maggie, she never thought of the poverty of her own.

"Now," said she, "every one of you sit still; not a word of noise, and no running out while I am gone, or I shall punish you worse than shutting you up in a dark closet. Mr. Pease, will you look to my school a moment?"

Away she bounded. Oh, what a step! Step! it was more like flying. A moment, hardly time for a few pleasant words to her school, and she bounds in again, with a little paper parcel in her hand. What could it mean? It means that,

Many a flower in wilds unseen, The sweetest fragrance grows; From many a deep and hidden spring, The coolest water flows.

She first inquires, "have they all been good?" "Yes, all." Then she unwraps her parcel. How they look and wonder, "what is it?"

What is it? Simply this.

She has been out and spent her sixpence to do unto others just as she had been done unto. Did ever cakes taste sweeter? Did ever benevolence better enjoy herself than Maggie did, while thus distributing her rewards? What a lesson of self-sacrifice! The first sixpence--the whole treasure of this world's goods, spent to promote the happiness of others. This was a hint. It were a dull intellect that could not improve it. The children were further fed, and bid to come again to-morrow. "And this," said he, "was the beginning of our ragged beggar children school, that has proved such a blessing to this neighborhood.

"Maggie," said I, taking her by the hand and looking her in the eye.

"Maggie, you have helped me a great deal to-day, will you come again to-morrow?"

The string was touched, and tears flowed. When had tears, except tears of anger, filled those eyes before? What had touched that string? Kind words!

"If you will let me stay, I wont go away. I can learn to sew. I can make these s.h.i.+rts."

"Yes, yes; and if you are here, these children will come, and we will have school every day."

And so Wild Maggie was Wild Maggie no more. She was tamed. Her life had taken on a new phase. To the questions, what would her father say? what would her mother say? she replied, "What do they care? what have they ever cared? Though they were not always so bad as they now are."

No, they were not always so bad as they now are. None of his cla.s.s were always so bad as they now are. Once her father was James Reagan, a respectable man, a good carpenter, and had a good home. Now where was he. Sunk, step by step, from hotel to saloon, from saloon to bar-room, from bar-room to corner grocery, from grocery to cellar rum hole, from a good house to a filthy, underground den in Centre street. He has but one more step to take--one more underground hole to occupy.

But such as he may reform. He did. You have seen that. Will you ask, how? You shall know.

Maggie became one of the household. She was washed, and fed, and clothed; and how she worked, and learnt everything, and how she listened at the temperance meetings to what "the pledge" had done, and how she wished her mother would come and try--try to leave off drinking, and become "the good mother she was when I was a little girl." For her father she had no hope. For her mother, she determined to persevere.

When she was sober she would talk, and cry, and promise, but the demon rum would overcome her, and then she would curse her daughter, and call her all the vile names that the insane devil in her could invent.

And so it went on; Maggie still determined, still trying. The right time came at last. One night, Maggie was not at the meeting. By and by, there was a little stir at the door. What is the matter? A little girl is pulling a woman, almost by force, into the room. It is Maggie and her mother. She has got her old ragged dress off, and looks quite neat in one that Maggie has made for her. But she hides her face. She is ashamed to look those in the face she would have once looked down upon. A woman is speaking--women can speak upon temperance--just such a woman as herself--is it not herself--is she awake, or does she sleep and dream?

If awake, she hears her own story. The story of a woman with a drunken husband. And she traces his fall from affluence down to beggary; then her fall, down, down, down, to a cellar in Farlow's Court; there her husband dies; there upon a pile of straw and rags upon the floor, in drunken unconsciousness, she gives birth to a child--a living child by the side of its dead father.

"What a night--what a scene, but you have not seen the worst of it. The very heavens, as though angry at such awful use of the gifts of reason, and the abuse of appet.i.te, sent their forked messengers of fire to the earth--less dangerous than the fire that man bottles up for his own d.a.m.nation; and the water came down in torrents, pouring into that cave where the dead, and living, and new born were lying together, and overflowed the floor, and when I felt its chill," said she, "I awaked out of my drunken sleep, and felt around me, to see, no, I could not see, all was pitch darkness. My child cried, and then--then a whole army of rats, driven in by the rain, driven by the water from the floor, came creeping on to me. Oh! how their slimy bodies felt as they crept over my face. Then I tried to awaken my husband, but he would not wake, and in my frenzy I struck and bit him--bit a dead man--for his was the sleep of eternity. Then I summoned almost superhuman strength, and creeped up the stairs and out into the court. I looked up; the storm was gone; there was a smile in heaven--it was the smile of that murdered babe; for when I had begged a light, and went back again to that dreadful, dreadful habitation--why are human beings permitted to live in such awful holes--has n.o.body any care for human life--what did I see? Mothers, mothers--mothers that sleep on soft couches--hear me, hear me--hear of the bitter fruits the rum trade bears--the rats had devoured the life blood of that child. What next I know not. I know that I have never drank since--never will again--by signing this pledge I was saved--all may be saved."

"All? all? Can I--can I be restored as you have been--can I shake off this demon that has dragged me down so low that my own mother would not know me; or knowing, would spurn me? Can I be saved?"

It was Maggie's mother.