Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated Part 6

"Yes, you, you, I was a thousand times worse. Look at me now."

"Yes, mother, you. Come." And she took her by the hand and led her up to the table, put a pen in her hand--dropt upon her knees--looked up to her mother imploringly--up to heaven prayerfully--her lips quivered--the tears rolled down her cheeks--"Now, mother, now."

'Tis done. She wrote her name in a fair hand--Mary Reagan--'Tis done.

'Tis done!--'tis done!--wild Maggie cries; 'Tis done!--'tis done!--the mother sighs; 'Tis done!--'tis done!--in chorus join, To bear aloft the news along.

'Tis done!--'tis done! a voice replies, Stand forth, be strong, and you shall rise.

And so she did. She never fell. She came to live in the house with Maggie. "I cannot go back," she said, "to live with your father, if I would stand fast; and I cannot think, after hearing that woman's story, last night, of ever drinking again. I know that woman; I knew her when she was a girl, one of the proudest and prettiest. My husband has spent many a dollar with hers in the bar-room. Oh yes, I knew her well. I did not know her last night; but when she told me who she was--that she was Elsie Wendall--then I knew her. Oh! I could tell you such a story--but not now. No! no, I cannot live with your father again, for I never will drink any more--never--never!"

"But what, if father will take the pledge?"

"Oh! then I should be a happy woman again. But there is no hope."

"Yes, there is hope. I shall watch him; and, mother, I _will_ save him."

It was a great promise--a great undertaking for a young girl to promise with an "I will." When did "I will" in woman's mouth ever fail?

That will was the strength of her life. It was for that she now lived and labored. Now she had hope--now 'twas lost--now revived again. Now he worked a month--sober for a whole month--then down he went if he happened to go into one of his old haunts, or meet with some of his old companions, who said, "come, Jim, let's take one drink--only one--one won't do any hurt"--but two follow the one. Then Maggie would look him up, get him sober again, and get him to work.

G.o.d bless that child! G.o.d did bless her, for she stuck to him, until he finally consented to come once, just once to the temperance meeting--but he would not sign the pledge--he never would sign away his liberties--no--he was a free man. Well only come, come and listen--come and see mother. That touched him. He loved mother--Yes he would come.

The evening came. Maggie watched every shadow that darkened the door.

Finally the last one seemed to have entered, but Jim Reagan was not among them. Maggie could not give it up. She slipped out into the street, it was well she did. She was just in time. A knot of men were talking together, of the tyranny of temperance men, wanting to make slaves of the people, getting them to sign away their rights--rights their fathers fought and bled for.

Yes, and so had they--at the nose.

They had just carried the point, and started to follow Cale Jones over to his grocery, who was going to stand treat all round. One lingered a moment--looked back--as though he had promised to go that way--but appet.i.te was too strong for conscience, and he turned towards the rum-hole. Just then a gentle hand is laid upon his arm, and a sweet voice says:

"Father, come with me, come and see mother--don't go with those men."

Woman conquered.

When Cale Jones counted noses, to see which he should charge with the treat he had promised "to stand," he found Jim Reagan was not in the crowd.

"Why, d.a.m.n the fellow, he has given us the slip after all our trouble.

I thought we had made a sure thing of it. I tell you what it is, boys, we must manage somehow to stop this business, or trade is ruined. If people are not to be allowed to drink anything but water, there'll be many an honest man out of business. Times is hard enough now, what'll they be then?"

Just then Tom Nolan, the mason--it used to be Drunken Tom Nolan--was telling what they would be, at the temperance meeting.

It was a propitious time for Maggie. She led her father in, he hung back a little, and tried to get into a dark corner near the door. That she would not allow; some of Satan's imps might drag him away from the very threshold of salvation. She led him along, he was sober now, and looked sad, perhaps, ashamed.

"James, you here? Oh!"

It was his wife. He knew her voice, it was that of other days. He stared at her; could it be her, so neat, and clean, and well dressed, and speaking so fondly to him--to him--for she had refused to see him ever since she took the pledge. Now, she came forward, took him by the hand, ragged and dirty as he was--she knew what would clean him--led him to a seat and sat down by his side. Maggie sat on the other. For a minute the speaker could not go on. There was a choking in his throat, strong man as he was, and there were many tears in the eyes that looked upon that father, mother, and daughter, that night.

"Jim Reagan," said the speaker, "I am glad to see you here. You are an old acquaintance of mine."

Jim Reagan looked at him with astonishment. Could that well dressed laboring man, clean shaved and clean s.h.i.+rted, be Tom Nolan?

"I don't wonder that you look inquiringly at me, as much as to say, 'is that you?' Yes, it is me, Tom Nolan, the mason, me who used to lay around the dirty rum holes with you, begging, lying, stealing, to get a drink. Do you think that now I would pick up old cigar stumps and quids of tobacco, to fill my pipe? Do you think I would wear a hat, as I have done, that my poor beggared boy picked out of the street? Look at that.

Does that look like the old battered thing I used to wear? Do these clothes look like the dirty rags I wore when you and I slept in Cale Jones's coal-box? Do I look like the drunken Tom Nolan that kept a family of starving beggars, with two other families, in one room, ten by twelve feet square; and that a garret room, without fireplace, without gla.s.s in its one window; with the roof so low that I could only stand up straight in one corner; and that mean room in the vilest locality on earth, in a house--ah! whole row of houses, tenanted by just such miserable, rum-beggared human beings--buildings owned by a human monster--houses for the poor which are enough to sicken the vilest of beasts; such as no good man would let for tenements, even when he could get tenants as degraded as I was--tenements that any Christian grand jury would indict, and any court, which desired to protect the lives of the people, would compel the owners to pull down, as the worst, with one exception, of all city nuisances.

"How did I live there? How did my wife and children ever live there, in that little miserable room, with seven others, just such wretches as ourselves? How do hundreds of such men, women, and children as we were, still live there? I was in that same room--the place my children used to call _home_--this evening. The entrance is in Cow Bay. If you would like to see it, saturate your handkerchief with camphor, so that you can endure the horrid stench, and enter. Grope your way through the long, dark, narrow pa.s.sage--turn to your right, up the dark and dangerous stairway; be careful where you place your foot around the lower step, or in the corners of the broad stairs, for it is more than shoe-mouth deep of steaming filth. Be careful too, or you may meet some one--perhaps a man, perhaps a woman--as nature divides the s.e.xes; as the rum seller combines them, both beasts, who in their drunken frenzy may thrust you, for the very hatred of your better clothes, or the fear that you have come to rescue them from their crazy loved dens of death, down, headlong down, those filthy stairs. Up, up, winding up, five stories high, now you are under the black smoky roof; turn to the left--take care and not upset that seething pot of butcher's offal soup, that is cooking upon a little furnace at the head of the stairs--open that door--go in, if you can get in. Look; here is a negro and his wife sitting upon the floor--where else could they sit, for there is no chair--eating their supper off of the bottom of a pail. A broken brown earthen jug holds water--perhaps not all water. Another negro and his wife occupy another corner; a third sits in the window monopolising all the air astir. In another corner, what do we see?

"A negro man, and a stout, hearty, rather good looking, young white woman."

"Not sleeping together?"

"No, not exactly that--there is no bed in the room--no chair--no table--no nothing--but rags, and dirt, and vermin, and degraded, rum degraded, human beings--men and women with just such souls as animate the highest and proudest in the land."

"Who is this man?"

"Dat am Ring-nosed Bill."

"Is that his wife?"

"Well, I don't know that. He calls her his woman."

"And she lives with him as his wife--you all live here together in this room?"

"Well, we is got nowhere else to live. Poor folks can't lib as rich ones do--hab to pay rent--pretty hard to do that alone."

"How much rent for this room?"

"Seventy-five cents a week, ebry time in advance."

"Who is this man?"

"They calls me Snaky Jo. 'Spose may be my name is Jo Snaky. Don't know rightly."

"What do you do for a living?"

"Well, mighty hard to tell dat, dat am fact, ma.s.sa. Picks up a job now and then. Mighty hard times though--give poor man a lift, ma.s.sa."

"Is that man and woman drunk."

"Well, 'spose am, little tossicated."

"A little intoxicated! They are dead drunk, lying perfectly unconscious, in each other's _emesis_, upon the bare floor. The atmosphere of this room is enough to breed contagion, and sicken the whole neighborhood, and would, but that the whole neighborhood is equally bad. Let us hasten down to the open air of the court--it is but little better--all pollution--all that breathe it, polluted. Yet, in that gate of death I once lived. Look at me, James, you knew me then. Look at me now, you don't know me. You knew me a beast--you may know me a man--you may know yourself one. Sign this paper--there is a power of magic in it--and you shall go home with me, and see where I live now, and I will clothe you and help to sustain you in your sober life, just as Thomas Elting did me, and with heaven's blessing, we will make a man of you."

"Too late! too late! not enough of the old frame left to rebuild."

"It is never too late. Look at the piles of old brick, and tiles, and boards, and joist, and rafters, and doors, and gla.s.s, of the pulled down houses. Are they wasted? I am a mason, you a carpenter; if we cannot put them back and build up the same old-fas.h.i.+oned edifice, we can make a good, snug, comfortable house. Come, sign the contract, and let us set right about the job."

"Father, come, father!"

He turned and spoke a few low words to his wife, to which she replied: