Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated Part 9

"'I will, I will! I will go away and sweep the streets to-morrow; they will give me another loaf of bread, and that is more than I have had for a whole week.'

"So you see, he will come again to-night, and then it is temperance meeting, and we will get him in. Depend upon it, if he ever takes the pledge again he will never break it."

True to his word, Reagan came the next night sober.

"See," said he, "Tom, I have got a quarter of a dollar, and have not spent it for liquor. If some of the harpies knew I had it, how they would be after me."

He hesitated long about going into the meeting. He was afraid his wife would be there, and he could not bear to meet her. She was equally afraid to meet him. Finally, one of the a.s.sistants went out and talked with him.

"Do you think," he replied, "that I could ever be a man again? I am afraid there is not enough of me left to make one. Manhood is all gone.

I feel as though I had made a beast of myself so long, that I must always be a beast. But if you think there is enough left of the old wreck--"

"Enough? Yes; come along."

This was a new voice, just come up on the other side. He looked around; it was Nolan.

"Nolan, my old friend--you were a friend to me; and I will try if Mr.

Pease will agree to shut me up and keep me out of the way of these alligators. Look at them. Don't they lie about just like alligators in the mud and swamps, ready to snap up every poor dog that comes within reach of their tails or jaws?"

Well, he took the pledge, and in due time we will see how he kept it.

While I give my readers a little respite from the contemplation of such characters as have been introduced in the preceding chapters, I propose to introduce a little episode in the life of two of those which they have seen engaged in the n.o.ble work of reclaiming and sustaining a poor inebriate in his efforts to become a sober man. That they had reason to believe in the possibility of such reclamation, the reader will understand after reading the historical facts of the next chapter.

CHAPTER V.

THE TWO PENNY MARRIAGE.

"And ye twain shall be one flesh."

"What G.o.d hath joined together, let no man put asunder."

No, not even rum; yet it often does. We have just read of one of the many thousand sad instances that have occurred in this world, of rum separating those who had taken upon them that holy ordinance which makes them as one flesh, one heart, one mind; and, unless such have one mind both to be drunk together, how can they live with one another? How can they live in rum's pollution in the holy bonds of matrimony? There is nothing holy about such a sinful life.

Do away with the cause--abolish intoxicating liquor from society, and you will not only rivet those holy bonds with golden rivets, but you will shut up nine-tenths of the brothels and gaming houses in this city.

Without rum they could not live over the first quarter's rent day. With it their profits are enormous--its effects awful.

I could point you to a house in this city, with its twenty-five painted harlots, where the sales of wine in one year have been thirteen thousand bottles, costing $15,000, and selling for $39,000. And why not a profit, since men and women will get drunk in a palace, the mere repairs or additions to which, in one season, cost the almost incredible sum of $70,000?

Who furnished the money? Who made the inmates what they are? Those who _made the wine_; not those who furnished the grape juice, for it is probable that the whole did not contain a thousand bottles full of that liquor.

What caused the inmates to be what they are? Rum!

Who made them harlots? Not those who marry, or are given in marriage.

Marriage is one of the best preventives of licentiousness, but it is not often perhaps that it produces so positive a reformation as in the following cases.

"I have married," said Mr. Pease to me one day, "some very curious couples. That of Elting was very remarkable."

He was sitting one evening, trying to post up his books, amid continued interruptions, such as, "Little Lucy's eyes are worse to-night, sir."

"Let me see. She must go into the hospital. Send the sore-eye nurse to me. Take this little girl to your room--keep her eyes well washed with cold water, and use that ointment. Report to me to-morrow. Go."

"That is a fine-looking woman."

"Yes, and an excellent nurse. She lived last year in one of those Centre street cellars. She came here with both eyes nearly out of her head; gouged by a drunken husband. We put her into the sore eye hospital, and soon found she would make a good nurse for the afflicted children."

"Mr. Pease, is it the powder once and the pills every hour, or is it t'other way?"

"Exactly. The other way. You have hit it. The powder is Dover's Powder, to allay fever. The pills are cathartic. Go."

"Cathartic. I never heard of that pill-maker before. Wonder if he will make as many as Brandreth has," says this interrupter as she goes away.

"Susan Apsley says you promised her she might go out this evening."

"Did she come in all right when she was out before?"

"All right, sir."

"Let her go."

"Please, sir, may I go with her?"

"Who is this."

"Juliana, sir. I want to go and see my cousin Madalina, sir."

"Oh, yes, I remember. You are the little Italian tambourine girl. Yes, you may go. See if you can get that pretty cousin of yours to come and live here."

"She would like to, sir, but her mother won't let her."

"Very well. Go."

And he resumed his work. "7 and 5 are 12, and 8 are 20; two 1's are 2--"

"Yes, but two ones want to be made one."

"How is that--what do you want?"

Reader, will you just turn to the ill.u.s.tration of the couple that now presented themselves as candidates for matrimony. The delineator and engraver have made one of the most perfect daguerreian pictures ever got up from description.

"What do you want of me?"

"We want to be married, sir."

"Want to be married--what for?"