THE FATHER'S PROPHECY--THE DAUGHTER'S FAITH.
Oh, faith, how beautiful thou art!
Like some pure, snowy-breasted dove,
Nested within that gentle heart,
Ye filled its softest pulse with love.
Just where the banks of the East River are the most broken and
picturesque on the New York shore, and the sunny slopes of Long Island
are most verdant in their Arcadian beauty, the river opens its bright
waters, and Blackwell's Island rises, green and beautiful, from its
azure bosom. Years ago, when this gem of the East River was a private
estate, with only one dwelling-house to break its entire seclusion, it
must have seemed like a mile's length of paradise dropped into the
water. Then, its hollows were fragrant with wild roses, haunted by
blackbirds and thrushes. Its shores were hedged in by the snow-white
dogwood, wild cherry and maple trees, laced together with native
grape-vines and scarlet creepers, that, even a year or two back, hung
along its shores, like torn banners left upon a battle-field.
Blackwell's Island had other inhabitants than the singing birds and
the sweet wild blossoms, when the orphans first landed there. Then its
extremities were burdened to the very water's edge, with edifices of
massive stone, where human crime and human misery were crowded
together in masses appalling to reflect upon.
On one end of the island, naturally so quiet and beautiful, rose the
rugged walls of the Penitentiary, flanked by outhouses, hospitals and
offices, every stone of which was eloquent of human degradation. Here,
a thousand wretched men, bowed with misery and branded with crime,
were crowded together. All the day long, herds of these degraded
beings might be seen in their coarse and faded uniform, burrowing in
the earth, blasting and shaping the rocks that were to form new
prison-walls, and filling the sweet air with groans and curses, which
once thrilled only to the songs of summer-birds.
At the other extremity of the island stood the Insane Asylum, a
beautiful pile, towering over a scene of misery that should fill the
heart with awe. There is, perhaps, no spot of its size, throughout the
length and breadth of our land, where every variety of human suffering
is so closely condensed as it has been for years on this island. The
moment your foot touches the shore you feel oppressed with feelings
that seem inexplicable. Pity, horror, and a painful blending of both,
crowd upon the heart with every breath you draw. Nothing but the air
seems free; nothing but the blue sky above seems pure, as you walk
from one scene of distress to another. You feel the more oppressed
because human effort seems so powerless to alleviate the misery you
witness; for who can minister to a mind diseased? What can take away
the deformity and sting of guilt? Where lies the power to lift poverty
from the degradation that the haughty and evil spirit of man has flung
around it? The very heart grows faint as it beats in this wilderness
of woe, and finds no fitting answer to questions like these.
But at the time these events happened there was one remnant of
beautiful nature left on Blackwell's Island--one spot where the
flowers were permitted to bloom in the pure breath of heaven--where
the trees were yet rooted to the earth, and filled as of old, with the
music of summer birds. On the very centre of the island stood an old
mansion house, the residence of its proprietor before the paradise
became city property. It was a rambling old building, with wings of
unequal length shaded with magnificent willows, and surrounded by
shrubbery, and pretty lawns, interspersed with fine old trees.
Terraces beautifully lifted from the water's edge; and gravel walks,
bordered with the thickest and heaviest box-myrtle, with here and
there a grape arbor spanning them with its leafy arch, sloped with
picturesque beauty to the river which washed both sides of the island.
A neglected and rude old place it was, but perhaps the more lovely for
that. Neglect only seemed to give richer luxuriance to every thing
around; the hedges and rose-thickets were tangled together. Great
snow-ball trees, trumpet vines and honeysuckles seemed to shoot out
more rigorously from want of pruning, and the trees had become
majestic with age.
From the broad hall you might see the river on either hand, gleaming
through the spreading branches. Now and then a snow-white sail glided
by, and at sunset the water seemed heaving up waves of gold wherever
your eye turned.
This was the Children's Hospital. In the low chambers, and the fine
old fashioned rooms, from two hundred and fifty to three hundred
children lay upon their little cots, in all stages of suffering to
which infancy is subject. It was a painful scene--those helpless
little creatures, orphaned, or worse than orphaned, in the morning of
life, wearing such looks of pain, and yet so patient. God help them!
It was a touching sight to watch the brightening of those little
faces, whenever the good matron passed into the wards ministering to
their comfort--poor things--by a kind look and soothing word, where
medicine might often less avail. Strange manifestations of character
might be witnessed among those little creatures--fortitude that might
shame a warrior--patience the most saintlike; and again--but why dwell
upon the evil that sometimes exhibits itself fullgrown, in the heart
of an infant?
If cries of bitter passion sometimes arose from those little couches
they came, alas! from hearts that had never learned that unrestrained
passion was a sin. If fierce words were wrung from those infant lips,
it was that anger, not kindness had been showered on them from the
cradle. To some of these little creatures oaths had been familiar as
caresses are to the infancy of others. Such was their household
language.
To this place, so beautiful in itself, so full of painful associations,
Isabel Chester was brought in less than a week after her mother's
burial. Since that day she had drooped like a broken lily. The
terrible grief to which her delicate nature had bent and swayed like
a reed; the sudden change from a home of quiet and tranquil love, to
the most bitter solitude known to the human heart--that of a crowd--had
completely prostrated the orphan. A slow fever preyed upon her; she
could not speak without feeling the hot tears gush from her eyes.
In this state she came under the observation of the Children's
physician, and, touched with compassion, he took her to the Infant
Hospital. Mary went also, for she too, was ailing, and the doctor saw
that it would be cruelty to part them. At the hospital these helpless
creatures had better food and more comfort than could be allowed them
among the seven or eight hundred healthy children with which the
nurseries on the Long Island shore were crowded. For days and weeks
Isabel lay prostrate on her little cot. She had no settled disease.
The child only seemed quietly fading away.
Mary Fuller never left her bed-side. She, too, was broken down with
grief, and her wearied frame had lost all its power of endurance; but
though the hand which held Isabel's drink trembled with weakness, the
little creature never complained, nor ever acknowledged that she was
ill enough to be in bed. Patient and sweet-tempered as an angel, she
watched by the child of those who had done so much for her. The love
and gratitude of her whole being seemed centered in that pale, but
still lovely orphan.
At length all this patient love had its reward. Isabel was well enough
to walk in the grounds, and with their feeble arms around each other,
these children might be seen from morning till night, wandering along
the shore, or sitting quietly beneath the grape-arbors that overlooked
the water. To the other children they were always gentle and kind, but
they had no companions, and they clung together with the deep trust
and holy love of sisters. They had no future--those hopeless children.
Chester had left no relatives that his child ever heard of, and his
gentle wife had been an orphan. Mary Fuller possessed only her
wretched, wretched mother.
But their gentleness, and Isabel's singular beauty, were sure to win
them friends. The Physician and the matron began to love the little
girls, and after a time they became the pets of the establishment.
While the locks of the other children were cut close to the head,
Isabel still possessed her long and flowing tresses. Day by day her
exquisite beauty deepened into health again, and the pensive cast
which grief had given to her features rendered them ideal as they were
lovely.
But as Isabel grew better, Mary Fuller seemed to sink and droop in all
her being. She was often found amid the shrubbery, weeping bitterly,
and alone. Toward nightfall, and at early morning, she might have been
detected stealing softly up the Hospital stairs, and away to a dim
corner of the garret, with a handful of berries or a fragment of cake
which the matron had given her during the day. Sometimes her voice,
low and sweet, as if in tearful entreaties, floated along the garret,
and then might have been heard another voice, sometimes rude,
sometimes querulous, but very feeble, answering her with sharp
reprimands. After this the child would come down in tears and steal
away, as we have described, to weep alone.
Thus they entered upon sweet June, literally a month of roses at the
Infant's-Hospital. The pale little invalids grew better that month,
and were gathered beneath the huge old trees with their nurses,
forgetting their pain in the sweet breath of the flowers; but that
month, though the butterflies were numerous, and humming-birds came
and went through the thickets like flashes from a rainbow, Mary Fuller
was seldom abroad with the rest. More and more of her time was spent
in the low, dim garret; but when she did come forth, those who
observed her saw a new and tranquil light upon her face. She was
sometimes seen to smile, as if a pleasant thought possessed her mind.
Just before this, Mary had asked permission to carry away a little
Bible from the matron's table. It was not brought back, but the matron
only smiled, and never inquired the reason. She had learned to love
and trust Mary Fuller.
There was a clergyman stationed at Blackwell's Island, to whose
spiritual charge was given from four to seven hundred persons at the
Penitentiary, four or five hundred of the insane, and nearly a
thousand children, at the nursery and its hospital. The welfare of all
these souls was entrusted to this meek Christian, and most faithfully
has he performed the solemn duties of his office from that day to
this. Always busy in behalf of the unhappy creatures, who, amid all
their degradation, loved and respected him, always cheerful, always
ready with his gentle word and consoling advice, he made this holy
mission with the helpless and the prisoner the one great business of
his life.
This good clergyman had a family to support on his miserable salary of
three hundred dollars a year, voted him by a Common Council that spent
ten thousand carousing in their tea-room. Had any one of those city
fathers ever been up so early, they might often have seen this good
man at daybreak toiling on foot to the city, or perchance miles away
to some country town, in search of a service place for some repentant
prisoner, or to carry a message from a sick child to its friends. In
his gentle humility the good man never complained, never said that the
pay awarded to his labors by the Common Council of our most wealthy
city, was too little for his wants. You saw it in his garments. You
might have read it in his meek sigh, when some object of compassion
presented unusual claims to his charity; but in his speech and
deportment he seemed ever grateful for the little that was given him.
This true-hearted Christian remains upon his post to this day. If a
single hundred dollars has been added to his yearly means of support,
it was through the intercession of others, and from no discontent
expressed by himself. Surely the reward of such men must be hereafter,
or in the heaven of their own souls.
It was pleasant to see the eyes of those little children brighten,
when the good clergyman entered the hospital. They were fatherless,
and he was better than a father to them. They were sick, and he
comforted them, even as our Lord comforted little children when they
were brought to Him. His hand touched their pale foreheads caressingly;
his mild voice sunk into their little hearts like dew upon a bruised
flower. His very tread upon the stairs was a blessing to them; when
they heard it, all unconsciously the little creatures would smile upon
their pillows, and murmur over fragments of the Lord's Prayer, for
with its holy language, his own lips had rendered most of them
familiar.
To this brave Christian little Isabel and her friend had become
greatly attached. He sat with them in the grape arbors; he helped them
arrange bouquets for the sick children, and while they were busy at
their sweet task, he, in his gentle way, would lead their thoughts
from the flowers to the God who gives them to beautify the earth. At
such times he would go quietly away, leaving the children happier and
better, but without the slightest consciousness that they had been
receiving religious instruction.
This was the man to whom Mary Fuller appealed one night, as he paused
to speak with her in the garden-path that leads along the water.
"Oh! sir, I have been waiting for you here; I thought you would come
this way," cried the child, placing her little hand in his, "I have
something to tell you--something that makes me happy as a bird?"
"You look happy, my child, and you look good, too," said the
clergyman, shaking her hand with a smile. "Come, now, tell me what
it is."
"It is a long story, and one that would make you cry if you knew all.
You are not in a hurry sir?"
"No, no! I am never in a hurry, my dear little girl, so if you have
much to say come in here, and I will listen an hour if you like."
There was an old summer-house on the bank, dilapidated, and
threatening to tumble over the declivity with the first rough wind.
The clergyman led his little friend into this open building, and sat
down upon the only entire seat that it contained.
The child sat by his side awhile, thoughtful and evidently striving to
arrange her ideas.
"Do you remember, sir, a long time ago, when we first came here, you
asked me about my father and mother? I told you that my father was
dead, but I did not say much of my mother. Sir, she was a prisoner
then, and I did not like to mention it; that perhaps was wrong, but I
couldn't help being ashamed."
"There was nothing wrong in that feeling," answered the clergyman,
gently.
"I am glad you think so," replied the child, "for now I am sure you
will not want me to tell you all that has ever happened--how she took
to drink when I was a little, little girl. She was not used to it, and
I don't know how she was led away--for my poor father never talked of
these things to me, but they killed him, sir--it broke his heart at
last. One day--I was only seven years old then, but I remember it, oh!
how well--she had been drinking, oh, she was dreadful always at those
times. I don't know what I did, but I believe that I was only in her
way as she crossed the floor--all that I can remember is, that she
struck at me with her hand and foot. It seemed as if she had crushed
me to the floor. The breath left my body--I was the same as dead for
a long, long time."
"Poor child," murmured the clergyman, gazing upon the little creature
with a look of profound compassion.
"When I came to myself, people thought I would never be good for
anything again, and, sometimes, I thought so too, for after that I
almost stopped growing, and all that was bright about me died away.
I believe, after that, she hated me, sir."
Mary paused a moment, and went on.
"But my father, oh, he loved me better and better; he only wanted to
live for my sake, he told me so many a time. My poor father was a good
man, sir; as good as you are, as good as Mr. Chester was; but he was
so unhappy that God was very kind not to let him live only for my
sake. But, oh, sir, I was all alone when he went. I need not tell you
how we lived. We were poor. You never, in your life, saw any persons
so poor as we were, after father died. She would not work, and when I
did not have enough to eat I couldn't do much. Oh, sir, it was a
miserable life; now when I have told you so much, you will not want me
to say any more about it than I can help."
"Say only what you wish, my child; I will listen."
"One night--she had been drinking night and day, for a week--two or
three women had been in, and while they drank I sat in a corner
longing for them to go. They quarreled; my mother struck one of the
women, and while they were swearing dreadfully, a policeman came in.
It was Mr. Chester--that was the first time I ever saw him. I have
told you about him, and how his child, poor, beautiful Isabel, came
here with me; but I did not tell you that the nurse at Bellevue was my
own mother. The doctors found out that she had been drinking, and sent
her away after that night. A few weeks ago she came up here to work
for the children. Nobody knew that she was my mother, but, oh! sir,
she looked very ill, and I said to myself when she passed me without
a word, only with black looks--I said, she is ill, I will take care of
her; I will go to her at night with nice things that the matron gives
me to eat--I will do without them myself, and, perhaps, this will make
her love me.
"I went up into the garret the first night, but she drove me away. I
would not give up, but went again. She was very ill that night--living
among that fever so long had poisoned all the pure breath she had
left. She was crying when I went up to the bed; I knelt down by the
bed and began to cry, too. She did not send me away. She did not
strike me, though I thought it was for that when she lifted her hand,
but she laid the hand on my head. Indeed she did, sir, and then I felt
she might be my mother yet!"
The child paused; the big tears that welled up from her heart were
choking her.
"I went to see her very often after that, for she was growing worse.
I carried her nice things, and tried every way to make her love me.
She was not always kind, but I didn't mind a little crossness now and
then, for great hopes were in my heart. My father loved his wife, and
I thought of him, and what a joy it would be if I, the poor thing he
wanted to live for, could do something toward making her good enough
to see him once more when she dies.
"Sir, may I ask you one question? If you want a thing very much, and
think and pray for it--does not God, sometimes, bring it all about
when you least expect anything of the kind? It seemed to me as if He
had done it when my mother complained of being so lonesome up there in
the Hospital garret, and wished that she had something to read. She
was a great reader, sir, once. I went down stairs, trembling like a
leaf, and got the matron's Bible. She did not say a word against it,
and I read to her a long time. After that she would ask me to read,
and every day as she grew weaker and weaker, I could see that she was
growing better, too.
"At last I asked her if she would let me bring you up to see her, but
she was vexed at the idea of a clergyman. Once or twice after that I
mentioned it, but she still answered no. Last night, as I was saying
my prayers by her bed, she began to cry softly, and then, sir, she
rose up and kissed me on the forehead. Then I asked her again, and she
said you might come--only she made me promise to tell you everything
about her first. But for that I would not talk of my poor mother's
faults, though it is only to you."
The child ceased speaking--she looked earnestly into the clergyman's
face.
"You will not go home till you have seen her?" she said.
"No, my child, I only trust that my poor efforts may be blessed as
yours have been," and the clergyman went into the Hospital, leading
Mary by the hand. It was an hour before he left the building, and when
he turned to shake hands with the little girl, you could see by the
expression of his face that it had been an important and heart-rending
hour to them all; over and over again did that good man's feet tread
those worn stairs, and each time his face looked more thankful than it
had done before. One evening he remained much longer than usual.
Little Mary had been in the garret since morning, and here, about nine
o'clock, the physician was called for the fourth time that day. He was
absent but a few minutes.
"You had better go up," he said to the matron, who met him in the
hall, "that poor woman is gone."
Mary Fuller turned her head as the matron came into that dimly-lighted
garret. Tears stood on her cheek, but her eyes were radiant with holy
light.
"Oh, madam, she was my mother! She kissed me! with her last breath she
kissed me!"
"She died," said the clergyman, in his low mild voice, "she died with
her arms round this little girl, calm and peaceful as a child."
"Go," said the matron, gently sending Mary to the stairs, "go, my
child, to-morrow you shall see her again."
The child went down, not to weep as they supposed, for there was a
higher and more holy feeling than grief in her young heart. She had
found her mother.