IN WHICH A GLEAM OF LIGHT IS SHED ON THE HISTORY OF ANNA BONARD.
A bottle of wine, and the mild, persuasive manner of Mr. Snivel, so
completely won over George's confidence, that, like one of that class
always too ready to give out their heart-achings at the touch of
sympathy, and too easily betrayed through misplaced confidence, he
commences relating his history. That of Anna is identified with it. "We
will together proceed to New York, for it is there, among haunts of vice
and depravity--"
"In depth of degradation they have no counterpart on our globe," Mr.
Soloman interrupts, filling his glass.
"We came up together--knew each other, but not ourselves. That was our
dark age." George pauses for a moment.
"Bless you," again interrupts Mr. Soloman, tipping his glass very
politely, "I never--that is, when I hear our people who get themselves
laced into narrow-stringed Calvinism, and long-founded foreign missions,
talk--think much could have come of the dark ages. I speak after the
manner of an attorney, when I say this. We hear a deal of the dark ages,
the crimes of the dark ages, the dark idolatry of darker Africa. My word
for it, and it's something, if they had anything darker in Sodom; if
they had in Babylon a state of degradation more hardened of crime; if
in Egypt there existed a benightedness more stubbornly opposed to the
laws of God--than is to be found in that New York; that city of merchant
princes with princely palaces; that modern Pompeii into which a mighty
commerce teems its mightier gold, where a coarse throng revel in coarser
luxury, where a thousand gaudy churches rear heavenward their gaudier
steeples, then I have no pity for Sodom, not a tear to shed over fallen
Babylon, and very little love for Egypt." Mr. Snivel concludes,
saying--"proceed, young man."
"Of my mother I know nothing. My father (I mean the man I called father,
but who they said was not my father, though he was the only one that
cared anything for me) was Tom English, who used to live here and there
with me about the Points. He was always looking in at Paddy Pie's, in
Orange street, and Paddy Pie got all his money, and then Paddy Pie and
him quarrelled, and we were turned out of Paddy Pie's house. So we used
to lodge here and there, in the cellars about the Points, in 'Cut Throat
Alley,' or 'Cow Bay,' or 'Murderer's Alley,' or in 'The House of the
Nine Nations,' or wherever we could get a sixpenny rag to lay down upon.
Nobody but English seemed to care for me, and English cared for nobody
but me. And English got thick with Mrs. McCarty and her three
daughters--they kept the Rookery in 'Cow Bay,' which we used to get to
up a long pair of stairs outside, and which God knows I never want to
think of again,--where sometimes fourteen or fifteen of us, men and
women, used to sleep in a little room Mrs. McCarty paid eight dollars a
month for. And Mr. Crown, who always seemed a cross sort of man, and was
agent for all the houses on the Points I thought, used to say she had it
too cheap. And English got to thinking a good deal of Mrs. McCarty, and
Mrs. McCarty's daughters got to thinking a good deal of him. And
Boatswain Bill, who lived at the house of the 'Nine Nations'--the house
they said had a bottomless pit--and English used to fight a deal about
the Miss McCartys, and Bill one night threw English over the high stoop,
down upon the pavement, and broke his arms. They said it was a wonder it
hadn't a broken his neck. Fighting Mary (Mary didn't go by that name
then) came up and took English's part, and whipped Boatswain Bill, and
said she'd whip the whole house of the 'Nine Nations' if it had spunk
enough in it to come on. But no one dare have a set-to with Mary. Mary
used to drink a deal of gin, and say--'this gin and the devil'll get us
all one of these days. I wonder if Mr. Crown'll sell bad gin to his
highness when he gets him?' Well, Bill was sent up for six months, so
the McCartys had peace in the house, and Mrs. McCarty got him little
things, and did for English until his arms got well. Then he got a
little money, (I don't know how he got it,) and Paddy Pie made good
friends with him, and got him from the Rookery, and then all his money.
I used to think all the money in the Points found its way either to the
house of Paddy Pie, or the Bottomless Pit at the house of the 'Nine
Nations,' and all the clothes to the sign of the 'Three Martyrs,' which
the man with the eagle face kept round the corner.
"English used to say in one of his troubled fits, 'I'd like to be a
respectable man, and get out of this, if there was a chance, and do
something for you, George. There's no chance, you see.' And when we went
into Broadway, which we did now and then, and saw what another world it
was, and how rich everything looked, English used to shake his head and
say, 'they don't know how we live, George.'
"Paddy Pie soon quarrelled with English, and being penniless again we
had to shift for ourselves. English didn't like to go back to Mrs.
McCarty, so we used to sleep at Mrs. Sullivan's cellar in 'Cut Throat
Alley.' And Mrs. Sullivan's cellar was only about twelve feet by twenty,
and high enough to stand up in, and wet enough for anything, and so
overrun with rats and vermin that we couldn't sleep. There were nine
rag-beds in the cellar, which as many as twenty-three would sometimes
sleep on, or, if they were not too tipsy, try to sleep on. And folks
used to come into the cellar at night, and be found dead in the morning.
This made such a fuss in the neighborhood (there was always a fuss when
Old Bones, the coroner, was about), and frightened so many, that Mrs.
Sullivan couldn't get lodgers for weeks. She used to nail no end of
horse-shoes over the door to keep out the ghosts of them that died last.
But it was a long while before her lodgers got courage enough to come
back. Then we went to the house of the Blazers, in 'Cow Bay,' and used
to lodge there with Yellow Bill. They said Bill was a thief by
profession; but I wasn't old enough to be a judge. Little Lizza Rock,
the nondescript, as people called her, used to live at the Blazers. Poor
Lizza had a hard time of it, and used to sigh and say she wished she was
dead. Nobody thought of her, she said, and she was nothing because she
was deformed, and a cripple. She was about four feet high, had a face
like a bull-dog, and a swollen chest, and a hunchback, a deformed leg,
and went with a crutch. She never combed her hair, and what few rags she
had on her back hung in filth. What few shillings she got were sure to
find their way either into Bill's pocket, or send her tipsy into the
'Bottomless Pit' of the house of the 'Nine Nations.' There was in the
Bottomless Pit a never-ending stream of gin that sent everybody to the
Tombs, and from the Tombs to the grave. But Lizza was good to me, and
used to take care of me, and steal little things for me from old Dan
Sullivan, who begged in Broadway, and let Yellow Bill get his money, by
getting him tipsy. And I got to liking Lizza, for we both seemed to have
no one in the world who cared for us but English. And there was always
some trouble between the Blazers and the people at the house of the
'Nine Nations.'
"Well, English was hard to do for some time, and through necessity,
which he said a deal about, we were driven out of every place we had
sought shelter in. And English did something they sent him up for a
twelve-month for, and I was left to get on as I could. I was took in by
'Hard-Fisted Sall,' who always wore a knuckle-duster, and used to knock
everybody down she met, and threatened a dozen times to whip Mr.
Fitzgerald, the detective, and used to rob every one she took in tow,
and said if she could only knock down and rob the whole pumpkin-headed
corporation she should die easy, for then she would know she had done a
good thing for the public, whose money they were squandering without
once thinking how the condition of such wretches as herself could be
bettered.
"English died before he had been up two months. And death reconciled the
little difficulty between him and the McCartys; and old Mrs. McCarty's
liking for him came back, and she went crying to the Bellevue and begged
them, saying she was his mother, to let her take his body away and bury
it. They let her have it, and she brought it away to the rookery, in a
red coffin, and got a clean sheet of the Blazers, and hung it up beside
the coffin, and set four candles on a table, and a little cross between
them, and then borrowed a Bible with a cross on it, and laid it upon the
coffin. Then they sent for me. I cried and kissed poor English, for poor
English was the only father I knew, and he was good to me. I never shall
forget what I saw in that little room that night. I found a dozen
friends and the McCartys there, forming a half-circle of curious and
demoniacal faces, peering over the body of English, whose face, I
thought, formed the only repose in the picture. There were two small
pictures--one of the Saviour, and the other of Kossuth--hung at the head
and feet of the corpse; and the light shed a lurid paleness over the
living and the dead. And detective Fitzgerald and another gentleman
looked in.
"'Who's here to-night?' says Fitzgerald, in a friendly sort of way.
"'God love ye, Mr. Fitzgerald, poor English is gone! Indeed, then, it
was the will of the Lord, and He's taken him from us--poor English!'
says Mrs. McCarty. And Fitzgerald, and the gentleman with him, entered
the den, and they shuddered and sat down at the sight of the face in the
coffin. 'Sit down, Mr. Fitzgerald, do!--and may the Lord love ye! There
was a deal of good in poor English. He's gone--so he is!' said Mrs.
McCarty, begging them to sit down, and excuse the disordered state of
her few rags. She had a hard struggle to live, God knows. They took off
their hats, and sat a few minutes in solemn silence. The rags moved at
the gentleman's side, which made him move towards the door. 'What is
there, my good woman?' he inquired. 'She's a blessed child, Mr.
Fitzgerald knows that same:' says Mrs. McCarty, turning down the rags
and revealing the wasted features of her youngest girl, a child eleven
years old, sinking in death. 'God knows she'll be better in heaven, and
herself won't be long out of it,' Mrs. McCarty twice repeated,
maintaining a singular indifference to the hand of death, already upon
the child. The gentleman left some money to buy candles for poor
English, and with Mr. Fitzgerald took himself away.
"Near midnight, the tall black figure of solemn-faced Father Flaherty
stalked in. He was not pleased with the McCartys, but went to the side
of the dying child, fondled her little wasted hand in his own, and
whispered a prayer for her soul. Never shall I forget how innocently she
looked in his face while he parted the little ringlets that curled over
her brow, and told her she would soon have a better home in a better
world. Then he turned to poor English, and the cross, and the candles,
and the pictures, and the living faces that gave such a ghastliness to
the picture. Mrs. McCarty brought him a basin of water, over which he
muttered, and made it holy. Then he again muttered some unintelligible
sentences, and sprinkled the water over the dying child, over the body
of poor English, and over the living--warning Mrs. McCarty and her
daughters, as he pointed to the coffin. Then he knelt down, and they all
knelt down, and he prayed for the soul of poor English, and left. What
holy water then was left, Mrs. McCarty placed near the door, to keep the
ghosts out.
"The neighbors at the Blazers took a look in, and a few friends at the
house of the 'Nine Nations' took a look in, and 'Fighting Mary,' of
Murderer's Alley, took a look in, and before Father Flaherty had got
well out of 'Cow Bay,' it got to be thought a trifle of a wake would
console Mrs. McCarty's distracted feelings. 'Hard-fisted Sall' came to
take a last look at poor English; and she said she would spend her last
shilling over poor English, and having one, it would get a drop, and a
drop dropped into the right place would do Mrs. McCarty a deal of good.
"And Mrs. McCarty agreed that it wouldn't be amiss, and putting with
Sall's shilling the money that was to get the candles, I was sent to the
'Bottomless Pit' at the house of the 'Nine Nations,' where Mr. Crown had
a score with the old woman, and fetched away a quart of his gin, which
they said was getting the whole of them. The McCartys took a drop, and
the girls took a drop, and the neighbors took a drop, and they all kept
taking drops, and the drops got the better of them all. One of the Miss
McCartys got to having words with 'Fighting Mary,' about an old affair
in which poor English was concerned, and the words got to blows, when
Mr. Flanegan at the Blazers stepped in to make peace. But the whole
house got into a fight, and the lights were put out, the corpse knocked
over, and the child (it was found dead in the morning) suffocated with
the weight of bodies felled in the melee. The noise and cries of murder
brought the police rushing in, and most of them were dragged off to the
Station; and the next day being Sunday, I wandered homeless and
friendless into Sheriff street. Poor English was taken in charge by the
officers. They kept him over Monday to see if any one would come up and
claim him. No one came for him; no one knew more of him than that he
went by the name of English; no one ever heard him say where he came
from--he never said a word about my mother, or whether he had a relation
in the world. He was carted off to Potter's Field and buried. That was
the last of poor English.
"We seldom got much to eat in the Points, and I had not tasted food for
twenty-four hours. I sat down on the steps of a German grocery, and was
soon ordered away by the keeper. Then I wandered into a place they
called Nightmare's Alley, where three old wooden buildings with
broken-down verandas stood, and were inhabited principally by butchers.
I sat down on the steps of one, and thought if I only had a mother, or
some one to care for me, and give me something to eat, how happy I
should be. And I cried. And a great red-faced man came out of the house,
and took me in, and gave me something to eat. His name was Mike
Mullholland, and he was good to me, and I liked him, and took his name.
And he lived with a repulsive looking woman, in a little room he paid
ten dollars a month for. He had two big dogs, and worked at day work, in
a slaughter-house in Staunton street. The dogs were known in the
neighborhood as Mullholland's dogs, and with them I used to sleep on the
rags of carpet spread for us in the room with Mullholland and his wife,
who I got to calling mother. This is how I took the name of Mullholland.
I was glad to leave the Points, and felt as if I had a home. But there
was a 'Bottomless Pit' in Sheriff street, and though not so bad as the
one at the house of the 'Nine Nations,' it gave out a deal of gin that
the Mullhollands had a liking for. I was continually going for it, and
the Mullhollands were continually drinking it; and the whole
neighborhood liked it, and in 'Nightmare's Alley' the undertaker found a
profitable business.
"In the morning I went with the dogs to the slaughter-house, and there
fed them, and took care of the fighting cocks, and brought gin for the
men who worked there. In the afternoon I joined the newsboys, as ragged
and neglected as myself, gambled for cents, and watched the policemen,
whom we called the Charleys. I lived with Mullholland two years, and saw
and felt enough to make hardened any one of my age. One morning there
came a loud knocking at the door, which was followed by the entrance of
two officers. The dogs had got out and bitten a child, and the officers,
knowing who owned them, had come to arrest Mullholland. We were all
surprised, for the officers recognized in Mullholland and the woman two
old offenders. And while they were dragged off to the Tombs, I was left
to prey upon the world as best I could. Again homeless, I wandered about
with urchins as ragged and destitute as myself. It seemed to me that
everybody viewed me as an object of suspicion, for I sought in vain for
employment that would give me bread and clothing. I wanted to be honest,
and would have lived honest; but I could not make people believe me
honest. And when I told who I was, and where I sheltered myself, I was
ordered away. Everybody judged me by the filthy shreds on my back;
nobody had anything for me to do.
"I applied at a grocer's, to sweep his store and go errands. When I told
him where I had lived, he shook his head and ordered me away. Knowing I
could fill a place not unknown to me, I applied at a butcher's in Mott
street; but he pointed his knife--which left a wound in my feelings--and
ordered me away. And I was ordered away wherever I went. The doors of
the Chatham theatre looked too fine for me. My ragged condition rebuked
me wherever I went, and for more than a week I slept under a cart that
stood in Mott street. Then Tom Farley found me, and took me with him to
his cellar, in Elizabeth street, where we had what I thought a good bed
of shavings. Tom sold _Heralds_, gambled for cents, and shared with me,
and we got along. Then Tom stole a dog, and the dog got us into a deal
of trouble, which ended with getting us both into the Tombs, where Tom
was locked up. I was again adrift, as we used to call it, and thought of
poor Tom a deal. Every one I met seemed higher up in the world than I
was. But I got into Centre Market, carried baskets, and did what I could
to earn a shilling, and slept in Tom's bed, where there was some nights
fifteen and twenty like myself.
"One morning, while waiting a job, my feet and hands benumbed with the
cold, a beautiful lady slipped a shilling into my hand and passed on. To
one penniless and hungry, it seemed a deal of money. Necessity had
almost driven me to the sign of the 'Three Martyrs,' to see what the man
of the eagle face would give me on my cap, for they said the man at the
'Three Martyrs' lent money on rags such as I had. I followed the woman,
for there was something so good in the act that I could not resist it.
She entered a fine house in Leonard street.
"You must now go with me into the den of Hag Zogbaum, in 'Scorpion
Cove;' and 'Scorpion Cove' is in Pell street. Necessity next drove me
there. It is early spring, we will suppose; and being in the Bowery, we
find the streets in its vicinity reeking with putrid matter, hurling
pestilence into the dark dwellings of the unknown poor, and making
thankful the coffin-maker, who in turn thanks a nonundertaking
corporation for the rich harvest. The muck is everywhere deep enough
for hogs and fat aldermen to wallow in, and would serve well the
purposes of a supper-eating corporation, whose chief business it was to
fatten turtles and make Presidents.
"We have got through the muck of the mucky Bowery. Let us turn to the
left as we ascend the hill from Chatham street, and into a narrow,
winding way, called Doyer's street. Dutch Sophy, then, as now, sits in
all the good nature of her short, fat figure, serving her customers with
ices, at three cents. Her cunning black eyes and cheerful, ruddy face,
enhance the air of pertness that has made her a favorite with her
customers. We will pass the little wooden shop, where Mr. Saunders makes
boots of the latest style, and where old lapstone, with curious framed
spectacles tied over his bleared eyes, has for the last forty years been
seen at the window trimming welts, and mending every one's sole but his
own; we will pass the four story wooden house that the landlord never
paints--that has the little square windows, and the little square door,
and the two little iron hand rails that curl so crabbedly at the ends,
and guard four crabbeder steps that give ingress and egress to its swarm
of poor but honest tenants; we will pass the shop where a short, stylish
sign tells us Mr. Robertson makes bedsteads; and the little, slanting
house a line of yellow letters on a square of black tin tells us is a
select school for young ladies, and the bright, dainty looking house
with the green shutters, where lives Mr. Vredenburg the carpenter, who,
the neighbors say, has got up in the world, and paints his house to show
that he feels above poor folks--and find we have reached the sooty and
gin-reeking grocery of Mr. Korner, who sells the _devil's elixir_ to the
sootier devils that swarm the cellars of his neighbors. The faded blue
letters, on a strip of wood nailed to the bricks over his door, tell us
he is a dealer in 'Imported and other liquors.' Next door to Mr.
Korner's tipsy looking grocery lives Mr. Muffin, the coffin-maker, who
has a large business with the disciples who look in at Korner's. Mrs.
Downey, a decent sort of body, who lives up the alley, and takes
sixpenny lodgers by the dozen, may be seen in great tribulation with her
pet pig, who, every day, much to the annoyance of Mr. Korner, manages to
get out, and into the pool of decaying matter opposite his door, where
he is sure to get stuck, and with his natural propensity, squeals
lustily for assistance. Mrs. Downey, as is her habit, gets distracted;
and having well abused Mr. Korner for his interference in a matter that
can only concern herself and the animal, ventures to her knees in the
mire, and having seized her darling pig by the two ears, does, with the
assistance of a policeman, who kindly takes him by the tail, extricate
his porkship, to the great joy of herself. The animal scampers,
grunting, up the alley, as Mr. Korner, in his shirt sleeves, throws his
broom after him, and the policeman surlily says he wishes it was the
street commissioner.
"We have made the circle of Doyer's street, and find it fortified on
Pell street, with two decrepit wooden buildings, that the demand for the
'devil's elixir,' has converted into Dutch groceries, their exteriors
presenting the appearance of having withstood a storm of dilapidated
clapboards, broken shutters, red herrings, and onions. Mr. Voss looks
suspiciously through the broken shutters of his Gibraltar, at his
neighbor of the opposite Gibraltar, and is heard to say of his wares
that they are none of the best, and that while he sells sixpence a pint
less, the article is a shilling a pint better. And there the two
Gibraltars stand, apparently infirm, hurling their unerring missiles,
and making wreck of everything in the neighborhood.
"We have turned down Pell street toward Mott, and on the north side a
light-colored sign, representing a smith in the act of shoeing a horse,
attracts the eye, and tells us the old cavern-like building over which
it swings, is where Mr. Mooney does smithwork and shoeing. And a little
further on, a dash of yellow and white paint on a little sign-board at
the entrance of an alley, guarded on one side by a broken-down shed, and
on the other, by a three-story, narrow, brick building (from the windows
of which trail long water-stains, and from the broken panes a dozen
curious black heads, of as many curious eyed negroes protrude), tells us
somewhat indefinitely, that Mister Mills, white-washer and wall-colorer,
may be found in the neighborhood, which, judging from outward
appearances, stands much in need of this good man's services. Just keep
your eye on the sign of the white-washer and wall-colorer, and passing
up the sickly alley it tells you Mister Mills maybe found in, you will
find yourself (having picked your way over putrid matter, and placed
your perfumed cambric where it will protect your lungs from the
inhalation of pestilential air,) in the cozy area of 'Scorpion Cove.'
Scorpion Cove is bounded at one end by a two-story wooden house, with
two decayed and broken verandas in front, and rickety steps leading here
and there to suspicious looking passages, into which, and out of which a
never-ending platoon of the rising generation crawl and toddle, keep up
a cheap serenade, and like rats, scamper away at the sight of a
stranger; and on the other, by the back of the brick house with the
negro-headed front. At the sides are two broken-down board fences, and
forming a sort of network across the cove, are an innumerable quantity
of unoccupied clothes-lines, which would seem only to serve the
mischievous propensities of young negroes and the rats. There is any
quantity of rubbish in 'Scorpion Cove,' and any amount of
disease-breeding cesspools; but the corporation never heard of 'Scorpion
Cove,' and wouldn't look into it if it had. If you ask me how it came to
be called 'Scorpion Cove,' I will tell you. The brick house at one end
was occupied by negroes; and the progeny of these negroes swarmed over
the cove, and were called scorpions. The old house of the verandas at
the other end, and which had an air of being propped up after a shock of
paralysis, was inhabited by twenty or more families, of the Teutonic
race, whose numerous progeny, called the hedge-hogs, were more than a
match for the scorpions, and with that jealousy of each other which
animates these races did the scorpions and hedge-hogs get at war. In the
morning the scorpions would crawl up through holes in the cellar,
through broken windows, through the trap-doors, down the long stairway
that wound from the second and third stories over the broken pavilion,
and from nobody could tell where--for they came, it seems, from every
rat-hole, and with rolling white eyes, marshalled themselves for battle.
The hedge-hogs mustering in similar strength, and springing up from no
one could tell where, would set upon the scorpions, and after a goodly
amount of wallowing in the mire, pulling hair and wool, scratching faces
and pommeling noses, the scorpions being alternately the victors and
vanquished, the war would end at the appearance of Hag Zogbaum, who,
with her broom, would cause the scorpions to beat a hasty retreat. The
hedge-hogs generally came off victorious, for they were the stronger
race. But the old hedge-hogs got much shattered in time by the
broadsides of the two Gibraltars, which sent them broadside on into the
Tombs. And this passion of the elder hedge-hogs for getting into the
Tombs, caused by degrees a curtailing of the younger hedge-hogs. And
this falling off in the forces of the foe, singularly inspirited the
scorpions, who mustered courage, and after a series of savage battles,
in which there was a notorious amount of wool-pulling, gained the day.
And this is how 'Scorpion Cove' got its name.
"Hag Zogbaum lived in the cellar of the house with the verandas; and old
Dan Sullivan and the rats had possession of the garret. In the cellar of
this woman, whose trade was the fostering of crime in children as
destitute as myself, there was a bar and a back cellar, where as many as
twenty boys and girls slept on straw and were educated in vice. She took
me into her nursery, and I was glad to get there, for I had no other
place to go.
"In the morning we were sent out to pilfer, to deceive the credulous,
and to decoy others to the den. Some were instructed by Hag Zogbaum to
affect deaf and dumb, to plead the starving condition of our parents,
to, in a word, enlist the sympathies of the credulous with an hundred
different stories. We were all stimulated by a premium being held out to
the most successful. Some were sent out to steal pieces of iron, brass,
copper, and old junk; and these Hag Zogbaum would sell or give to the
man who kept the junk-shop in Stanton street, known as the rookery at
the corner. (This man lived with Hag Zogbaum.) We returned at night with
our booty, and received our wages in gin or beer. The unsuccessful were
set down as victims of bad luck. Now and then the old woman would call
us a miserable lot of wretches she was pestered to take care of. At one
time there were in this den of wretchedness fifteen girls from seven to
eleven years old, and seven boys under eleven--all being initiated into
the by-ways of vice and crime. Among the girls were Italians, Germans,
Irish, and--shall I say it?--Americans! It was curious to see what means
the old hag would resort to for the purpose of improving their features
after they had arrived at a certain age. She had a purpose in this; and
that purpose sprang from that traffic in depravity caused by the demands
of a depraved society, a theme on her lips continually."