The Dangerous Classes of New York Part 12

"In East Thirty-fourth Street, in a tenement-house, a poor sewing-woman has lived for the last two years. She had formerly been in very good circ.u.mstances, and her husband, a respectable mechanic, earned a support for her and her children, until at length he fell into intemperate drinking. With the appet.i.te for liquor on him, everything that he made was spent, and he himself was gradually becoming worse and worse. The poor wife was forced to the hardest work to keep her children and herself alive. Last winter, in a moment of desperation, the husband put his name down for a three-years' whaling voyage, and was taken off to sea, leaving the woman with an old father and three children to care for. Many a night, the old man says, has the poor creature walked up from the lower part of the city (some three or four miles) with four dozen s.h.i.+rts on her back, through snow and wet, and then, without fire or food, in her wet clothes, has worked till the dawn of day for the poor little ones dependent on her. He has seen _the blood_ come from her mouth and nose after some of these efforts. Still more bitter than all this, was the sense of desertion by her husband. But it was all in vain.

The children for whom she had slaved, and whom she loved more than her own life, were attacked with scarlet fever, and two of them died in the mother's arms. One only, a sweet little girl, was left. With them went the spring of hope and courage which had sustained the hard-working mother. Her father says she never shed a tear, but she lost heart; and, though never doubting of the goodness of her Great Father, she had not the spirit for the remaining work of life. Her exposures and hard labor had brought on a cough, and finally a disease of the lungs. She was at last unable to work, and could only lie upon her bed and depend on the chance charities of strangers.

"The teacher of our Fortieth-street School, who, in a way unseen and unknown to the world, is a minister of mercy and goodness to all that quarter of the city, first discovered her, and has managed, with a little aid here and there, to lighten her dying hours.

"I was called in the other day and held a long conversation with her.

She has no more fears or anxieties; she is not even troubled about her little one. G.o.d will care for her. 'Once,' she said, 'I felt it so hard to lose the children, but now I am glad they are gone! They will be much better where they are than here. I have put everything away now,' she added, with an expression of sublime faith and hope on a face whose worn features the hectic flush made almost beautiful again. 'I trust all to my Redeemer. Through him alone I hope. He will forgive me and receive me.' She spoke of her many trials and sorrows--they were all over, and she was glad she was soon to be at rest.

"We asked about her food. She said she could not relish many things, and she often thought if she could only get some of the good old plain things she had in Ireland at her brother's farm she should feel so much better.

"I told her we would get her some good genuine oat-meal cake from an Irish friend. Her face lighted up at once, and she seemed cheered by the promise.

"'Oh, sir! I have thought so much of my mother in this sickness, and those happy, happy days. I was such a happy girl! How little she thought I would come to this! We lived in the North, you know, and had everything very comfortable, as all the Protestant Irish do. But it's all gone, gone,' she said, dreamily, 'and I wouldn't have it back again, for G.o.d is the best friend--He knows,

"'Oh, how glad I am to die!

His rod and His staff they comfort me.'

"The words were simple, but the whole was touching beyond description, forcing tears whether one would or not.

"We were glad to find that her clergyman, the Missionary of the Calvary Church, had administered the sacraments to her that day. May she soon be where the sting of poverty, the rubs and blows of hard circ.u.mstances, the loneliness of desertion, the anxiety and care, and hopelessness, and disappointment which have followed her unhappy path, shall cease forever, and the unfortunate one shall enter on her new and blissful life of peace and abiding love!"

DISCOURAGEMENT.

"I was lately visiting a poor woman, who had seen better circ.u.mstances, the wife of a worker in an iron-foundry. The room was bare but clean, and the woman was neatly dressed, though her face looked thin and worn, and her eyes had an unusual expression of settled, sad discouragement. A little girl of ten or eleven sat near her tending a baby, with the same large sad blue eyes, as if the expression of the mother had come to receive a permanent reflection in the child's face. Her husband had been sick for several months, which put them all behind, though now he was getting work enough.

"'You know how it is, sir,' she said, 'with working people: if a man falls out of work for a day, the family feels it for a week after. We can hardly make the two ends meet when he's well, and the moment he is sick it comes hard upon us. Many's the morning he's gone down to the foundry without his breakfast, and I've had to send out the little Maggy there, to the neighbors, for bits of bread, and then she's taken it down to him.'

"'She is a beggar, then?'

"'Yes, sir, and sorrow of it. We never thought we could come to that. My mother brought me up most dacently, and my husband, he's a very good scholard, and could be a clark or anything, but we can't help it! We must have bread. I would be willing to do anything, wash, scrub, or do plain sewing; and I keep trying, but I never find anything. There seems no help for us; and I sometimes feel clean gone and down-hearted: and I'm troubled at other things, too."

"'What other things?'

"'At my sin, ye see.'

"'What do you mean?'

"'Well, sir, if I could only have peace of mind! But I work on from Monday morn to Sat.u.r.day night, and I never hear or see anything good; and when Sunday comes, I can't go out; I haven't any bonnet for my head, or any dress fit for a dacent church. I just walk the floor, and I don't dare to think of ever meeting G.o.d."

"'Are you a Catholic?'

"'Yes, sir; I was brought up one, and so was my husband, but now it's little we know, as they say, of ma.s.s, meeting, or church; we ain't neither Catholics or Protestants; I might as well be a haythen. We haven't any books, nor a prayer-book, or anything. I know it, sir, we ought to pray," she continued, "but I kneel down sometimes, and I get up and say to my husband, 'It's no use my praying, I am too much distracted.' If I could only get some good to my soul, for I think of dying often, and I see I should not be at all ready. _Life is a burden to me._' I spoke of the hopes and consolations which can come to poor as well as rich, and of her children. 'Yes, sir; no one can tell the patience of the Lord. How much He has borne from me! Oh, if I could only have peace of mind, and see those children getting on well, I should be glad to die. That little girl cries every time we send her out to beg, and she's learning nothing good. But I am afraid nothing will ever come lucky to us; and oh, sir, if you could have seen how we started in Ireland, and what a home my mother had; she was a very different woman from what I am.'

"We spoke of her attending the mission meeting in Fortieth Street, and reading a Testament given by us. She seemed glad to do both.

"'Oh, sir, if I could only feel that friends.h.i.+p with G.o.d you spoke of, I shouldn't care; I could bear anything; but to work as we are doing, and to have such trouble, and see the poor wee thing grow thinner and poorer, and my man almost down broken, and then to get no nearer--no, we keep getting farther from the Lord! Oh, if I was only ready to die! I haven't nothing in this world.'

"Let us hope that the peace-giving words of Christ, the love of the Redeemer, may at length plant in that poor, weary discouraged soul the seeds of hope and immortal faith, even as they have done in so many thousands weary and heavy-laden!"

THE SWILL-GATHERER'S CHILD.

"Most of those familiar with the East River Industrial School will remember a poor widow--a swill-gatherer--who lived in the notorious village of shanties near Forty-second Street, known as 'Dutch Hill.' She owned a small shanty, which had been put up on some rich man's lot as a squatter's hut, and there, with her pigs and dogs and cat in the same room, she made her home. From morning till evening she was trailing about the streets, filling up her swill-cans, and at night she came back to the little dirty den, and spent her evenings--we hardly know how. She had one smart little girl who went to the Industrial School. As the child came back day by day, improving in appearance, singing her sweet songs, and with new ideas of how ladies looked and lived, the mother began to grow ashamed of her nasty home. And I remember entering one day, and finding, to my surprise, pigs and rubbish cleared out, the walls well scrubbed, and an old carpet on the floor, and the mother sitting in state on a chair! It was the quiet teachings of the school coming forth in the houses of the poor.

"After a while the little girl began to get higher ideas of what she might become, and went out with another girl to a place in the West. She did well there, and was contented, but her mother was continually anxious and unhappy about her, and finally, after some years, forced her to return to the city. She was now a very neat, active young girl, far above her mother's condition, and the change back to the pig-shanty and Dutch Hill was anything but pleasant. The old woman hid away her best clothes to prevent her going back, and seemed determined to make her a swill-gatherer like herself. Gradually, as might be expected, we began to hear bad stories about our old scholar. The people of the neighborhood said, she drank and quarreled with her mother, and that she was frequenting houses where low company met. Another of the worst Dutch Hill girls--the daughter of a drunkard--was constantly with her. Soon we heard that the other young girl had been sent to Blackwell's Island, and that this one must be saved now, or she would be utterly lost. I went up at once to the old woman's shanty, though with but the feeblest hopes of doing anything, yet with many unuttered prayers. For who that knows the career before the street-girl of the city can help breathing out his soul in agony of prayer for her, when the time of choice comes?

"When I entered the shanty, the young girl was asleep on the bed, and the mother sat on a box, crooning and weeping.

"'Och, and why did I iver tak ye from that swate place--ye that was makin' an honest woman of yoursel'! Ach, G.o.d bless your honor! can ye help her? She's a'most gone. Can't ye do somethin'?'

"'Well, how is she doing now?'

"'Och (in a whisper), your honor, she brought three bad fellers last night, and she brake my own door in, and I tould 'em-says I, I'm an honest woman, and I never had ony sich in my kin--and she was drunk--yes, yer honor, she, my own darlint, strak me, and wanted to turn me out--and now there she's been sleepin' all the mornin'. Ach, why did I tak her out of her place!'

"Here the girl woke up, and sat up on the bed, covering her face in shame. I said some few sober words to her, and then the mother threw herself down on the floor, tears pouring down her cheeks.

"'Ach, darlint! my own swate darlint! will ye not list to the gintleman?

Sure an' ye wouldn't bring disgrace to yer ould mither and yer family!

We've had six generations of honest people, and niver wan like this!

Ach, to think of comin' to your ind on the Island, and be on the town!

For the love of the blessed Vargin, _do_ give them all up, and say ye won't taste a drop--do, darlint!'

"The girl seemed obdurate; so I took up the sermon, and we both pleaded, and pictured the shame and pain and wretched life and more wretched death before her. There is no need of delicacy in such cases, and the strongest old Bible Saxon words come home the deepest. At last, her tears began to flow, and finally she gave her full a.s.sent to breaking off from liquor and from her bad company (it should be remembered she was only about sixteen); and she would show her repentance by going back to the place where she was, if they would receive her. I hardly expected she would do so; but in a day or two she was in the office, and started for her old situation. Since that we have had a letter from her and her mistress, and she seems to be getting on wonderfully well. May G.o.d uphold her!

"The following is a letter we have received from her since:

"'B----, PENN., October 11.

"'MY DEAR MOTHER--I have the pleasure of writing a few lines to you, to let you know that I am well. I got safe back to my place; kind friends took me back again; I have got into the country, where there is plenty of everything to live on. Dear mother, I would like very much to hear from you. I hope you are all well; please write soon. I want you to show this letter to Miss Spratt. [Now Mrs. Hurley.]

Good-by, dear mother.

M.

"'DEAR MISS SPRATT--As I was writing to my mother, I thought I would like to write a few lines to you. Now that I am so far away, I feel a grateful remembrance of your kindness, I am very sorry I did not have a chance of going to see you before I left the city. Please tell Mr. Brace I am much obliged to him for his kindness: tell him I got safe back to Mr. M.'s, and have a very good home. Good-by, Miss Spratt'"

The East River Industrial School (at No. 206 East Fortieth Street) still continues its humble but profound labors of love. Mrs. Hurley is still there, the "Mend of the poor" for miles around, carrying sympathy, advice, and a.s.sistance to thousands of unbefriended creatures, and teaching faithfully all day in the School. Two gentlemen have especially aided her in providing food and clothing for her little ones; and the lady-volunteers still give liberally of their means and time. May the School long s.h.i.+ne as a light in one of the dark places of the city.

CHAPTER XV.

THE PROTESTANT POOR AND STREET-ROVERS.

It is not often that our efforts carry us among Protestant poor, but it happens that on the west side of the city, near Tenth Avenue and Twenty-seventh Street, is a considerable district of English and Scotch laboring people, who are mainly Protestants.

A meeting of ladies was called in the western part of the city, in like manner with the proceedings at the formation of the other Schools; and a School was proposed. The wife of a prominent property-holder in the neighborhood, a lady of great energy of character, Mrs. R. R., took a leading part, and greatly aided the undertaking; other ladies joined, and the result was the formation of the

HUDSON RIVER INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL,

the fourth of our Schools founded in 1854. With all these Schools, in the beginning, the ladies themselves raised all the funds for their support, and, as I have related, devoted an incredible amount of time to aiding in them, there being usually, however, two salaried teachers.