_The Bay of Portland--Departure for Boston--First Impression of the
Ocean--The Snares of a Passage--Arrival at Boston--First
Impressions of it--The Journey of a Cab--An Omen of Evil--A House
of Ill-Fame--The Heartlessness of Men--A Word on Destiny._
In the beautiful bay of Portland, at night--the last night of June,
eighteen hundred and thirty-nine--a noble steamer swung at her moorings,
pawing the water most impatiently, and spouting smoke and steam from her
great nostrils. There was confusion, such as was never known before the
days of invention; carriages turning over; people of all classes and
ages, on shore and on board, hurrying to and fro. When bedlam was in its
zenith--legs breaking, oaths in plenty--the bell rung out the chime of
the inferno and away she went.
Out on the sounding sea and in a thronging multitude--the salt spray
anon dashing furiously up against the gunwale of the vessel--there moved
a stately female figure, seemingly alone. It was the ill-fated subject
of these memoirs. Her countenance wore an expression of resoluteness
seldom to be seen on the features of woman. Her feet had never trod the
deck of a steamboat before, and now, for the first time, her eyes
feasted on the sight of ocean. Listlessly, and as if enwraped in
spirituality, she gazed on the surging waves. They were crested by the
silvery moonlight, each frolicksomely chasing the other, and
collectively presenting the appearance of a steel-clad host rushing into
battle. Maria was filled with the deepest awe. Words were utterly
inadequate to express her emotion. This was that mighty, boundless,
fathomless ocean of which she had heard and dreamed so much. It kissed
Arabian sands, and sighed its lullaby to a thousand islands, and roared
in terror, and lashed the icebergs around the pole! Often and often, in
earlier years, had her fancy covered its surface with armed genii in
their tiny skins, and with birds of sparkling plumage; a thousand
hymning echoes from a thousand sources enchanted the ear. Now all things
were trooping fantastically; now they vanished in a twinkling. Peris
weaving hair and song and coral; old Neptune careering in the plenitude
of power; great serpents snapping their tails: whales swallowing and
vomiting Jonahs; these, and many more, were the themes of legend and
story which thrilled her nature with wonder and delight! Oh, not as then
did her soul now drink from the fountains of pleasing, alluring
anticipation and fairy nonsense! Pennyless, forsaken, friendless, in the
undulating world; an ardent and a confiding heart already scorched by
the living embers of despair, Maria had a part to play in the unknown
future, which the genius of a conqueror could not execute or comprehend.
A man is brave and bold because he is armed and strong; but where is the
man who can or ever did surmount the difficulties and trials which beset
the pathway of an unprotected female, whose bark is launched on the
precarious tide of a sensual, selfish, scoffing, devilish world? Not all
the heroes of all the Greeks and Romans subdued a foe so terrible, as
mankind to woman! I have said she was pennyless. When the steward of the
boat dingled his bell, giving notice for “all who had not paid their
passage to walk up and settle,” she sent word to the Captain requesting
an interview. Shortly he came, when, in a most affecting manner, she
expressed her inability to pay her fare, and implored his generosity to
allow her to pass without charge. He assented, conducted her to a state
room, and told her to take courage and sleep without sadness. Generous
man! thought she, some of nature’s noblemen are yet living; and with
gratitude and prayer she undressed and went to bed. Sleep soon came to
her eyelids, for she was weary. But scarcely had sleep veiled the
memory, before a portly, well dressed man, stealthily entered the room
without a light, took off his clothes and crawled into the same bed! She
waked not until his arms were firmly clasped around her form. Then she
uttered a scream, but amid the tremendous noise of the boat’s machinery
and the dash of the waters, that cry was drowned. She struggled
furiously to get away from his grasp, but failed. Then he put his lips
to her ear and whispered, “A free passage; you are without money, and I
have an abundance; be quiet, and all shall go well with you.” Her brain
was confused; her mouth was dum. She felt that her hour had come. He
accomplished his purpose, and remained with her through that long,
bewildering night.[6]
Gaily broke the morning, and with its coming the boat landed at Foster’s
wharf, in Boston. Maria had already risen. She went out, and up the
stairway to the promenade deck, to look at Boston. The world seemed new
to her. It was not that abode of honor, nor of love, nor of joy, which
the years of her fancy had painted it. Boston! to her, a great and
wonderful city. How much she had heard of Boston. It was before her, but
she did not dream about it now as she had done so many, many times
before, when her imagination played upon its hundred spires or traced it
through and through. Her eye now drank the great reality, and the
confused roar which she heard, and the still greater confusion of human
beings and animal, which she saw, with the uneven, smutty-looking
buildings, and the narrow avenues which threaded its pulsating heart,
made her tremble. Oh! for a friend or a beggar to guide her footsteps.
While in this state of uncertainty, a cab driver approached her, and
very politely inquired if she wished to be taken to any part of the
city? His pleasant and obliging demeanor gave her encouragement, and she
frankly explained to him that she was here a stranger; that she must
find a boarding house and secure a frugal sustenance by labor. At this
he smiled and said “Certainly, step into my cab, and I will find you a
good place without difficulty.” She assented; and the cab driver, sure
of his prize, drove rapidly from the wharf, as a low and heartless laugh
burst from the throats of a gang of starched loafers standing near, who
knew both the purposes of the driver and the circumstances of the
previous night.
Through winding streets and cross lanes, by sudden turns and jumbles,
they drifted along. Now, cabby was in Washington street, amid a sea of
trucks and horses, huge omnibusses and small fry, groping as in the
dark; now he dashed through another street, on the west side of which
spread out, like a moss carpet, the Common; the broad, the beautiful,
the world-famed Boston Common. Then a turn was made, and Maria thought
that they were going back to the very wharf they had left. But he soon
bore off to the right, over by a large brick edifice, standing on an
eminence and commanding one of the loveliest prospects which creation
affords. As she saw it, through a pane in the cab door, she almost
forgot her destitute situation and her sorrows. Passing this, they
descended a hill, and at length cabby halted before a house in Lowell
street. It was a house of ill-fame. The character of its inmates were of
course unknown to her; her heart was even gladdened by the light of a
bevy of gay faces at the window. As she alighted on the pavement, a
raven, so unusual in that place, darted by so close to her that its
pinions brushed the ribbons of her bonnet. She entered the house and was
familiarly but respectfully welcomed, saying all the while in her bosom,
“Thank God, it is well at last.”
[Illustration]
Oh, conjurings of innocence, thy web is woven with threads of chalk--the
morality and uprightness of this world! The wolf howls at thy philosophy
and is hungering! Dream not of the world’s honor, nor seek
disinterestedness among men; for thou wilt not find it. Hearken no more
to the seductive accents of friendship; they flow from polluted lips; in
them the devil chants thy requiem. Hate and curse and shun the Race; in
that and that only is there protection and safety.
The seraglio of vice into which Maria had thus been cast, was daily and
nightly visited by men of all grades. Came there the banker in silk
stockings; the improvident sailor, just from the wave; the artisan, with
the pittance of toil; the sucker-sharp, whose swindlings and lies are
the wages of prostitution; the students of Harvard; the silver-haired
deacon of the church of God; yea, EVEN THE PREACHER, RIGHT FROM HIS
PULPIT, FLUSHED WITH WINE AND LUST![7] Came there the men of the South,
ardent as a southern sun could make them: reckless men, who dashed about
the country, lavishing the coffers wrung from the blood of slavery. And
they not only, but likewise the pomatum beetles and butterflies of
Europe, the spawn of an imbecile aristocracy, who are the scavengers of
death and hell in every age and clime.
* * * * *
Days, days, days! Whether of pleasure or of pain, how noiselessly they
steal away, and leap from the juttings of Time. Say what you will: let
theologians crack their skulls in harrowing up proofs to the contrary:
we are the creatures of circumstance. Take the fair maiden, in the bloom
of a life of promise; how long ere the mirror will proclaim to her the
coming of that signet of waning years, the first grey hair? And upon
each of us there is written a destiny--a fate. We may put forth our
human might and throw up barriers against the tide, it availeth not; we
are swept into the lap of that destiny at last.