settled districts facing the island shore, with as good a grace as
London includes her multitudinous districts on both sides of the Thames.
Were all the population who live by her, and legitimately belong to her,
now united with her, as some day they must be by absorption, New York
would now contain more than 1,300,000 people. For this union New York
need make no effort. The higher organization always controls and
incorporates the lower.
The release of New York commerce from the last shackles of the Southern
"long-paper" system, combined with the progressive restoration of its
moral freedom from the dungeon of Southern political despotism, has
left, for the first time since she was born, our metropolitan giantess
unhampered. Let us throw away the poor results of our last decade! New
York thought she was growing then; but the future has a stature for her
which shall lift her up where she can see and summon all the nations.[E]
FOOTNOTES:
[E] In addition to the obligations elsewhere recognised, an
acknowledgment is due to the well-known archaeologist and statistician of
New York,--Mr. Valentine,--who furnished for the purpose of this article
the latest edition of his Manual, in advance of its general publication,
and to the great convenience of the writer.
NEEDLE AND GARDEN.
THE STORY OF A SEAMSTRESS WHO LAID DOWN HER NEEDLE AND BECAME A
STRAWBERRY-GIRL.
WRITTEN BY HERSELF.
INTRODUCTION.
I am very sure that nothing was ever farther from my thoughts than the
writing of a book. The pages which follow were never intended for
publication, but were written as an amusement, sometimes in long winter
evenings, when it was pleasanter to be indoors, and sometimes in summer
days, when most of the circumstances mentioned in them occurred. I was a
long time in writing them, as they were done little by little. There was
a point in them at which I stopped entirely. Then I lent the manuscript
to several of my acquaintances to read. Some of these kept it only a few
days, and I feel quite sure soon tired of it, as it afterwards appeared
that they had read very little of it: they must have thought it
extremely dull. But these probably borrowed it only out of compliment,
and so I was neither surprised nor mortified. The only surprise was,
that now and then there was one who did have patience to go over it all,
as it was written in a common copy-book, not in a very nice hand, and
with a great many erasures and alterations. But when one has a favorite,
it is grateful to find even a single admirer for it. So it was with me.
I wrote from love of the subject; and when any one was kind enough to
give his approval, I felt exceedingly pleased, not because I had a high
opinion of the matter myself, but only because I had written it. Then it
must be acknowledged that my small circle of acquaintances comprised
more workers than readers. Those who had a taste for reading found their
time so occupied by the labor necessary to their support that but little
was left to them for indulging in books; and the few who had leisure
were probably such indifferent readers as to make the task of going over
a blotted manuscript too great for their patience, unless it were more
interesting than mine.
At last, after a very long time, and a great many strange experiences,
the manuscript fell into the hands of one who was an entire stranger to
me, but who has since proved himself the dearest friend I ever had. He
read it, and said it must be published. But the thought of publication
so frightened me that it almost deprived me of sleep. Still, after very
long persuasion, I consented, and the whole was written over again, with
a great many things added. When it was all ready, he told me I must
write a preface. So I was persuaded even to this, though that was a new
alarm, and I had scarcely recovered from the first. I have always been
retiring,--indeed, quite out of sight; and nothing has reconciled me to
this publicity but the knowledge that no one will be able to discover
me, unless it be the very few who had patience to read my manuscript.
Even they will find it so altered and enlarged as scarcely to remember
it.
Yet there is another consideration which ought to reconcile me to coming
forward in a way so contrary to what I had ever contemplated. I think
the story of my quiet life may lead others to reflect more seriously on
the griefs, the trials, and the hardships to which so many of my sex are
constantly subjected. It may lead some of the other sex either to think
more of these trials, or to view them in a new and different light from
any in which they have heretofore regarded them. They may even think
that I have suggested a new remedy for an old evil. I know that many
such have labored to remove the wrongs of which poor and friendless
women are the victims. But while they have already done much toward that
humane end, as much remains to do. I make no studied effort to influence
or direct them. The contrast between my first and last experience was so
great, that, in rewriting, I added some facts from the experience of
others to give force to the recital of my own. My hope is, that humane
minds may be gratified by a narrative so uneventful, and that they,
fortified by position and means, will be led to do for others, in a new
direction, as much as I, comparatively unaided, have been able to do for
myself.
CHAPTER I.
Having always had a great fondness for reading, I have gone through
every book to which my very limited circle of acquaintance gave me
access. Even this small literary experience was sufficient to impress
upon my mind the superior value of personal memoirs. Of all my reading,
they most interested me; and I have learned from others that such books
have most interested them. Indeed, biography, and personal narrative of
all kinds, seem to command a general popularity. Moreover, we like to
know from the person himself what he does, how he thinks and feels, what
fortunes or vicissitudes he encounters, how he begins his career, and
how it ends. All biography gives us most of these particulars, but they
are never so vividly recited as by the subject of the narrative himself.
Accordingly what was once a kind of diary of the most unimportant events
I have transformed into a personal history. I know the transformation
will not give them any importance they did not originally possess, but
it gives me at least one chance of making my recital interesting.
All who have any knowledge of the city of Philadelphia will remember
that on its southern boundary there is a large district known as the
township of Moyamensing. Much of it is now incorporated with the
recently enlarged city, but the old name still clings to it. There are
many thousand acres in this district, which stretches from the Delaware
to the Schuylkill. The junction of the two rivers at its lower end makes
it a peninsula, which has long been known as "The Neck." When the city
was founded by William Penn, much of this and the adjoining land was in
possession of the Swedes, who came first to Pennsylvania. They had
settled on tracts of different sizes, some very large, and some very
small, according to their ability to purchase. It was then covered by a
dense forest, which required great labor to clear it.
My ancestors were among these early Swedes. They were so poor in this
world's goods as to be able to purchase only forty acres of this
extremely cheap land. Even that was not paid for in money, but in labor.
In time they cleared it up, built a small brick house after the quaint
fashion of those early days, the material for which was furnished from a
superior kind of clay underlying the land all around them, and
thenceforward maintained themselves from the products of the soil, then,
as now, proverbial for its fruitfulness. It descended to their children,
most of whom were equally plodding and unambitious with themselves. All
continued the old occupation of looking to the soil for subsistence; and
so long as the forty acres were kept together, they lived well. But as
descendants multiplied, and one generation succeeded to another, so the
little farm became subdivided among numerous heirs, all of whom sold to
strangers, except my father, who considered himself happy in being able
to secure, as his portion, the quaint old homestead, with its then
well-stocked garden, and a lot large enough to make his whole domain an
acre and a half.
I have many times heard him relate the particulars of this acquisition,
and say how lucky it was for all of us that he secured it. The other
heirs, who had turned their acres into money, went into trade or
speculation and came out poor. With the homestead of the first settler
my father seemed to have inherited all his unambitious and plodding
character. His whole habit was quiet, domestic, and home-loving. He was
content to cultivate his land with the spade, raising many kinds of
fruits and vegetables for the family and for market, and working
likewise in the fields and gardens of his neighbors; while in winter he
employed himself in making nets for the fishermen.
But much of this work for others was done for gentlemen who had fine old
houses, built at least a hundred years ago. The land in Moyamensing is
so beautifully level, and is so very rich by nature, that at an early
day in the settlement of the country a great many remarkably fine
dwellings were built upon it, to which extensive gardens were attached.
Father had been in and all over many of these mansions, and was fond of
describing their wonders to us. They were finished inside with great
expense. Some had curiously carved door-frames and mantels, with parlors
wainscoted clear up to the ceiling, and heavy mouldings wherever they
could be put in. These old-time mansions were scattered thickly over
this beautiful piece of land. Such of them as were built nearest the
city have long since been swept away by the extension of streets and
long rows of new houses; but all through the remoter portion of the
district there are many still left, with their fine gardens filled with
the best fruits that modern horticulture has enabled the wealthy to
gather around them.
I remember many of those that have been torn down. One or two of them
were famous in Revolutionary history. The owners of such as remained in
my father's time were glad to have him take charge of their gardens. He
knew how to bud or graft a tree, to trim grapevines, and to raise the
best and earliest vegetables. In all that was to be done in a
gentleman's garden he was so neat, so successful, so quiet and
industrious, that whatever time he had to spare from his own was always
in demand, and at the highest wages.
When not otherwise occupied, my mother also worked at the art of
net-making. At times she was employed in making up clothing for what
some years ago were popularly called the slop-shops, mostly situated in
the lower section of the city. These were shops which kept supplies of
ready-made clothing for sailors and other transient people who harbored
along the wharves. It was coarse work, and was made up as cheaply as
possible. At that time the shipping of the port was much of it
congregated in the lower part of the city, not far from our house.
When a little girl, I have often gone with my mother when she went on
her errands to these shops, doing what I could to help her in carrying
her heavy bundles to and fro; and more than once I heard her rudely
spoken to by the pert young tailor who received her work, and who
examined it as carefully as if the material had been silk or cambric,
instead of the coarse fabric which constitutes the staple of such
establishments. I thus learned, at a very early age, to know something
of the duties of needle-women, as well as of the mortifications and
impositions to which their vocation frequently subjects them.
My mother was a beautiful sewer, and I am sure she never turned in a
garment that had in any way been slighted. She knew how rude and
exacting this class of employers were, and was nice and careful in
consequence, so as to be sure of giving satisfaction. But all this care
availed nothing, in many cases, to prevent rudeness, and sometimes a
refusal to pay the pitiful price she had been promised. Her disposition
was too gentle and yielding for her to resent these impositions; she was
unable to contend and argue with the rough creatures behind the counter;
she therefore submitted in silence, sometimes even in tears. Twice, I
can distinctly remember, when these heartless men compelled her to leave
her work at less than the low price stipulated, I have seen her tears
fall in big drops as she took up the mite thus grudgingly thrown down to
her, and leave the shop, leading me by the hand. I could feel, young as
I was, the hard nature of this treatment. I heard the rough language,
though unable to know how harshly it must have grated on the soft
feelings of the best mother that child was ever blessed with.
But I comprehended nothing beyond what I saw and heard,--nothing of the
merits of the case,--nothing of the nature and bearings of the
business,--nothing of the severe laws of trade which govern the conduct
of buyer and seller. I did not know that in a large city there are
always hundreds of sewing-women begging from these hard employers the
privilege of toiling all day, and half-way into the night, in an
occupation which never brings even a reasonable compensation, while many
times the severity of their labors, the confinement and privation, break
down the most robust constitutions, and hurry the weaker into a
premature grave.
I was too young to reason on these subjects, though quick enough to feel
for my dear mother. When I saw her full heart overflow in tears, I cried
from sympathy. When we got into the street, and her tears dried up, and
her habitual cheerfulness returned, I also ceased weeping, and soon
forgot the cause. The memory of a child is blissfully fugitive. Indeed,
among the blessings that lie everywhere scattered along our pathway, is
the readiness with which we all forget sorrows that nearly broke down
the spirit when first they fell upon us. For if the griefs of an entire
life were to be remembered, all that we suffer from childhood to mature
age, the accumulation would be greater than we could bear.
On one occasion, when with my mother at the slop-shop, we found a
sewing-woman standing at the counter, awaiting payment for the making of
a dozen summer vests. We came up to the counter and stood beside
her,--for there were no chairs on which a sewing-woman might rest
herself, however fatigued from carrying a heavy bundle for a mile or two
in a hot day. And even had there been such grateful conveniences, we
should not have been invited to sit down; and unless invited, no
sewing-woman would risk a provocation of the wrath of an ill-mannered
shopman by presuming to occupy one. Few employers bestow even a thought
upon the comfort of their sewing-women. They seldom think how tired they
become with overwork at home, before leaving it with a heavy load for
the shop, nor that the bundle grows heavier and heavier with every step
that it is carried, or that the weak and over-strained body of the
exhausted woman needs rest the moment she sets foot within the door.
The woman whom we found at the counter was in the prime of life,
plainly, but neatly dressed,--no doubt in her best attire, as she was to
be seen in public, and she knew that her whole capital lay in her
appearance. I judged her to be an educated lady. Though a stranger to my
mother, yet she accosted her so politely, and in a voice so musical,
that the gracefulness of her manner and the softness of her tones still
linger in my memory. Looking down to me, then less than ten years old,
and addressing my mother, she asked,--
"How many of them have you?"
"Only three, Ma'am," was the reply.
"I have six of them to struggle for," she said,--adding, after a
moment's pause, "and it is hard to be obliged to do it all."
I saw that she was dressed in newly made mourning. I knew what mourning
was,--but not then what it was to be a widow. My mother afterwards told
me she was such, and was therefore in black. Other conversation passed
between the two, during which I looked up into the widow's face with the
unreflecting intensity of childish interest. Her voice was so
remarkable, so kind, so gentle, so full of conciliation, that it won my
heart. There was a sadness in her face which struck me most forcibly and
painfully. There was an expression of care, of overwork, and great
privation. Yet, for all this, the lines of her countenance were
beautiful even in their painfulness.
While I thus stood gazing up into the widow's face, the shopkeeper came
forward from a distant window, by whose light he had been examining the
vests, threw them roughly down upon the counter in front of her, and
exclaimed in a sharp voice,--
"Can't pay for such work as this,--don't want it in the shop,--never had
the like of it,--look at that!"
He tossed a vest toward my mother, who took it up, and examined it. One
end of it hung down low enough for me to catch, and I also undertook the
business of inspection. I scanned it closely, and was a sufficient judge
of sewing to see that it was made up with a stitch as neat and regular
as that of my mother. She must have thought so, too; for, on returning
it to the man, she said to him,--
"The work is equal to anything of _mine_."
Hearing a new voice, he then discovered, that, instead of tossing the
vest to the poor widow, he had inadvertently thrown it to my mother.
Then, addressing the former, he said, in the same sharp tone,--
"Can't pay but half price for this kind of work; don't want any more
like it. There's your money; do you want more work?"
He threw down the silver on the counter. The whole price, or even
double, would have been a mere pittance, the widow's mite indeed; but
here was robbery of even that. What, in such a case, was this poor
creature to do? She had six young and helpless children at home,--no
husband to defend her,--no friend to stand between her and the man who
thus robbed her. A resort to law were futile. What had she wherewith to
pay either lawyer or magistrate? and was not continued employment a
necessity? All these thoughts must have flashed across her mind. But in
the terrible silence which she kept for some minutes, still standing at
the counter, how many others must have succeeded them! What happy images
of former comfort came knocking at her heart! what an agonizing sense of
present destitution! what a contrast between the brightness of the one
and the gloom of the other! and then the cries of hungry children
ringing importunately in her ears! I noticed her all the time, and,
child that I was, did so merely because she stood still and made no
reply,--utterly unconscious that emotions of any kind were racking her
grief-smitten heart. I felt no such emotions myself,--how should I
suppose that they had even an existence?
She made no answer to the man who had thus wantonly outraged her, but,
turning to my mother, looked up into her face as if for pity and advice.
Were they not equally helpless victims on the altar of a like domestic
necessity, and should not common trials knit them together in the bonds
of a common sympathy? A new sadness came over her yet beautiful
countenance; but no tear gushed gratefully to relieve her
swelling heart. She took up the money,--I saw that her hand was
trembling,--placed it in her purse, lifted from the counter a bundle
containing a second dozen of vests, and, bidding my mother a graceful
farewell, left the scene of this cruel imposition on one utterly
powerless either to prevent it or to obtain redress. I have never
forgotten the incident.
These labors of my mother were at no time necessary to the support of
the family; but, though quiet and retiring in her habits, she had
ambitious aspirations for supplying herself with pocket-money by the
work of her own hands. As I said before, she was a beautiful sewer on
the finest kinds of work, such as, if obtained from the families in
which it is worn, would have yielded her remunerative wages. But we
lived away beyond the thickly settled portion of the city, had no
influential acquaintances from whom it could be procured, and hence my
mother, with thousands who were really necessitous, resorted to the
tailors, to the meanest as well as to the honorable. When my father
heard of the indignities they practised on us, and of the shamefully low
prices they paid us, he forbade my mother ever going to them again. He
said their whole business was to grow rich by defrauding of their just
dues the poor women who were thus competing with each other for work,
and that we should do no more for any of them, until we could find an
honest man and a gentleman to deal with.
But my father, always busy in his garden or in that of some wealthy
neighbor, knew nothing even of the little outside world into which we
had penetrated. His generous, unsuspecting nature thus led him to feel
sure that the honest and the gentlemanly were to be found in abundance;
but he overlooked the fact that it was only his quiet wife upon whom was
devolved the task of discovering them, as well as that her explorations
had never yet been rewarded with success.
Notwithstanding these discouragements, my mother was firmly of opinion
that the needle was a woman's only sure dependence against all the
vicissitudes of life. She believed, in a general way, that a good
needlewoman would never come to want. The idea of diversifying
employment for the sex had never crossed her mind; the vocation of woman
was to sew. All must not only do it, but they must depend on it. She
considered it of little use to think of anything beyond the needle. She
could not see, that, if all the women of the country did the same thing,
there must inevitably be more laborers than could find employment,--that
the competition would be so great among them as to depress prices to a
point so low that many women could not live on them,--and that those who
did would drag out only a miserable existence.
Though a woman of excellent sense, with a tolerable education, and fond
of all the reading she could find time to do, still she continued to
plead for this supremacy of the needle, even after her humiliating
experience at the slop-shops. She was the most industrious sewer I have
ever known,--and not only industrious, but neat, conscientious, and
rapid. Machines, with iron frames and wheels, had not then been
invented; but since they have, I have never seen a better one than my
mother. Her frame, if not of iron, seemed quite as indestructible, even
if it did turn out fewer stitches. Times without number has she sat up
till midnight, plying her needle by the dull light of a common candle:
for there was no gas in our suburban district. While we children were
sound asleep, there she sat, not from necessity, but from pure love of
work. Yet she was up early, long before any of the dull sleepers of the
household had stirred, and had more trouble to get us down to breakfast
than to get up the meal itself. I scarcely thought of these things
during the young years of my life, when they were occurring; but as I am
writing this, they all come thronging before my memory with the
freshness of yesterday. They will no doubt seem dull to others; but the
recollection is very precious to me.
With this conviction of its being almost the sole mission of a woman to
sew, she made the needle a vital point in my education, as well as in
that of my sister. There were two girls of us, and a brother. I was the
eldest, and my sister the youngest of the three. Thus, when I was quite
a child, I learned to use the needle; and as I grew older, the utmost
pains were taken to teach me every branch of sewing, from the commonest
to the most difficult. My sister went through the same course of
instruction.