HE LIVES AS HE HAD NEVER EXPECTED.
"My stars shine darkly over me"--_Shakspeare._
"A most poor man, made tame by fortune's blows."--_Idem._
How little do one half of the world know how the other half live! And
how just the remark of Goldsmith, that they who would know the miseries
of the poor, must see life and endure it. More especially do these
remarks hold good in respect to the inhabitants of crowded cities. In
country towns, and small villages, every body knows every body, and,
very commonly, almost too much of every body's business. But in large
cities, the people are huddled together in close proximity, and are yet
as much strangers to each other as though divided by a waste of
wilderness or waters. The rich, who fare sumptuously; the middling
class, who have enough, and a little to spare; and the squalid wretch
who would be overjoyed with a basket of coals, and a joint of meat; may
all be found in the same block, and yet neither one of them know any
thing of the comforts, the distress, or the affluence of the other. The
middling and lower classes of people in the country are prone to form
an undue estimate of the advantages, and the comparative ease, of a
city life. Because so much is said of the wealth of cities, they
imagine that all who dwell in them must be rich, and consequently have
no hard labor to perform. But it is a sad mistake. "Great cities," says
the philosopher of Monticello, "are great sores;" and if the envious
and discontented poor know little of the splendid misery of the fancied
rich,--of the number of aching heads and hearts upon beds of
down,--much less do the truly rich, living within great cities, and the
world at large without them,--know of the wretchedness and the crime,
the poverty and the woe, to be found in the great and crowded marts of
trade and commerce in every country. Were mankind, in general, better
informed upon these particulars, there would be less of envy in the
world, and less of poverty. There would likewise be fewer people "well
to do" in the country, crowding to the cities, to become beggars, and
at last either to find dishonorable graves, or, when honestly dead, to
merit the Italian inscription upon a well man who took physic--"I was
well--I wished to be better--and here I am."
During the five years immediately succeeding the catastrophe recorded
at the close of the last chapter, I neither saw, nor heard a syllable
from, the subject of this narrative. The winter of 1827-28, was one of
extraordinary severity in New-York. The month of January, in
particular, was unusually tempestuous and severe. Those of the common
poor, who had been the most improvident and reckless when they should
have husbanded their earnings, were brought upon the public bounty
considerably earlier than usual, and backs "hanging in ragged misery"
were already more plenty than was wont.
It was on a bitterly cold Saturday morning of that month, that my old
and unfortunate friend presented himself in my office--but alas how
changed! He looked exceedingly dejected and poverty-stricken--as though
what little of energy he ever might have possessed, had been utterly
extinguished by the withering touch of penury. A single glance of
course served to show that matters had gone hard with him--and that if
"the world owed him a living," as he was formerly wont to boast, it was
turning him off with a very scanty one. A storm, which had been
fiercely raging for several days, gave no signs of exhaustion.--The
snow, which had been falling for fifty or sixty hours--not in a fleecy
shower, but mingled with cutting particles like hail--filled the
atmosphere, and with each successive gust of a stiff northwester, was
whirled aloft in vast curling sheets and wreaths--or driven through the
narrow streets with a force that was blinding and almost irresistible.
Nor man nor beast ventured forth, save from dire necessity, and it
seemed as though the storm-king with his fiercest aspect, and armed
with all his terrors, had made a conquest of the city.--Wheelwright's
left arm was in a sling, and his tattered garments afforded but a sorry
protection against the rude peltings of the pitiless storm, of which I
have given a very inadequate description.
After the ordinary and reciprocal inquiries as to health, &c. had been
interchanged, he sat several minutes with averted eyes, and without
uttering a syllable. I saw that he was embarrassed, poor fellow!--and
turned to the window--viewing the clouds of snow that were high
upborne, like a canopy over the city, or playing in fantastic wreaths
as the wind whistled around the cornices of the contiguous
buildings--that he might collect himself. At length he broke silence
nearly as follows:--
"I'm afeard you will think I have come on rather curious
business-like--for me."
"How so? What is the case, Mr. Wheelwright?"
"Why, I've had a hard life on't, since I seen you, when my school was
broke up; and I've called to see--I was too proud once to come of such
an arrant--but I thought 'twas likely you would not see a poor family
suffering in such a storm as this."
"Surely not--if it is in my power to render assistance."
"Well, I thought as much--and I've called to see if you have not some
second-hand clothes, and a little something to eat, that you can give
us--or any thing else that you can spare--for we are in very great
distress."
"Indeed--in actual want--of food and clothes, did you say? What has
brought----
"O, don't ask--that woman there--I little thought I should ever come to
this."
"Why have you not informed me of it before? Pray what is the matter
with your hand, doctor?"
"I accidentally run a gouge through it, and hain't been able to do any
work since. We had nothing to live upon. My hands were my only
resources from day to day;--my working tools, and every article of
furniture in the house, to the last blanket, the last shirt, and my
wife's last shawl, have been pawned at the broker's, to enable us to
keep the breath of life in us. We have now neither a stick of wood to
burn, nor a morsel to eat!"
"Can it be possible, my dear sir, that you are reduced to a condition
so deplorable? Why have you not been to see me sooner?"
"I was ashamed."
"But you need not have been. You should not have been left to suffer
deprivations like these."
"I knew that, very well; but after all that has happened, I wished to
bury myself, and never see the face of an old friend again. I hoped to
live through, until my hand got well, and then I could have gone to
work again."
"Work? What work?"
"You know I had partly larnt a trade once--pity I ever left it!--and as
I retained knowledge enough of the use of tools to make common
bedsteads, after my school run down, and my visions of property all
vanished, I engaged in that business, and have contrived to get a poor
living by it ever since, until I cut my hand so dreadfully."
"But your wife--cannot she do something with her needle?"
"What! that woman?"----
He paused, and heaved a deep sigh. It was a bitter exclamation, from
the heart.
"No," he continued. "She has no faculty for getting along. She does
nothing but harass my life out."
"A misfortune, in--
"True enough, I missed the fortune; and I should not have come to you
now, but that we are freezing, and the children were shivering and
crying for something to eat, when I left."
"Children! How many have you?"
"The woman, you know, had one when I married her, and we have had two
since. One of these is dead. I am not sorry. Poor little fellow! he is
much better off."
But it is needless to continue the colloquy. My heart bled for him. His
tale of want and woe was told with the honest simplicity of truth. He
did not shed any tears, but looked as though he was past weeping--like
the personification of disappointment and despair.
From his relation it appeared, that during four years, my unfortunate
friend's only income had been derived from the manufacture of the
common article of furniture already mentioned. His place of residence
and workshop were in the remote eastern part of the city. He had never
the means of purchasing the materials for more than one bedstead at a
time, and was obliged, from his extreme poverty, to carry the timber on
his shoulders from the Albany Basin to his shop--a distance of two
miles. This labor he performed at evenings. The article done, he had
then to carry it to the furniture auction rooms in Chatham-square, for
sale. The profit, over and above the cost of the materials, constituted
the whole of his income--sometimes amounting to a dollar upon each, and
sometimes to not more than two and six-pence--according to the run of
the sales. And thus from day to day, for four long years, had the poor
fellow been living, as we have seen, without allowing the friends of
his better years to know where he was, or in what business or
occupation he was engaged. Having once been the cause of his father's
ruin, he was resolved not to call upon the old gentleman again while he
could possibly avoid it, or preserve life without it. The motive for
his conduct in this trying emergency, was honorable; and in the present
hour of his bitter affliction I felt more sympathy for him, than I had
ever supposed it possible to entertain for a man who, in times past,
had made such indifferent use of his advantages. If there is any thing
in this world that can subdue the passions, damp the ardor, or quench
the spirit of a man, it is biting, remediless, hopeless poverty. Many
are the minds, far more powerful than that of Mr. Wheelwright, which
have sunk under its chilling influence. And my wonder was, how the
doctor had borne up as well as he seemed to have done, under the
complication of calamities which had befallen him.
Having heard his woeful relation through, I did what any one entitled
to the name of man, would have done under the like circumstances. He
was provided with an overcoat, and furnished with a little basket of
provisions; and I promised to call in the afternoon, and examine into
his condition for myself; albeit one of the ancient writers hath
informed us that "he that spendeth his liuelode to helpe the poore at
theyr nede, semeth mad vnto hym who hath reposed the ayd of this
presente lyfe in worldlie riches."
The melancholy history just related by my unfortunate friend, threw me,
after his departure, into a train of musing upon the vicissitudes of
life, and the inequality with which Fortune distributes her favors. I
could not help calling to mind Miss Edgeworth's admirable tale of Murad
the Unlucky, and his friend the lucky Saladin. Like the former,
Wheelwright seemed destined but to fall from one calamity into another,
and effort to retrieve his affairs, did but plunge him deeper into the
slough of misery. I could not but perceive, however, that as in the
case of the persecuted Mussulman, the misfortunes of my poor friend had
their origin in his own bad management, and to speak the honest truth,
of common sense. The wound in his hand, indeed, might perhaps be
accounted an unavoidable casualty; but had it not been for his previous
errors, this misfortune would not have proved the cause of such
hopeless penury and suffering.
We shall see, ere we close our tale whether a better if not a brighter
destiny did not await him in coming years. Meantime, those who would
avoid contemplating a scene of suffering like that which is to follow,
should remember with Seneca,--"He that never was acquainted with
adversity, has seen the world but on one side, and is ignorant of half
the scenes of nature."
Too many there are, even in this boasted age of benevolence, who are
thus ignorant of the scenes referred to by the ancient moralist--who
believe it a virtue to be rich, and that there is no sin but beggary.
"When fortune wraps them warm"--while their tables smoke with savory
viands, and the choicest wines distil their grateful aroma--they turn a
deaf ear to every sound of distress, exclaiming,
"----------------I am _rich_,
And wherefore should the clamorous voice of woe
Intrude upon mine ear?"
But we can forgive them, as their own worst enemies. They know nothing
of the luxury of doing good, and when they are called to make up their
last account, they will mourn that they have no investments in those
funds that never fluctuate--in that bank "where moth and rust doth not
corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal." Let such
remember, moreover, that as they brought nothing into world, so they
can carry nothing out of it. And let it also be remembered, in the
language of another, that were there as many worlds as there are
particles of sand in our globe, and were those worlds composed of angel
gold; or were there any thing in the wide extent of the Almighty's
dominion, which is more precious than gold, and were those worlds
composed of that material, all melted into one solid mass, to fill the
coffers of a single individual, it would avail him nothing in procuring
the salvation of his soul, or in affording him happiness beyond the
brief period of his three-score years and ten!