THE HOUSE OF THE NINE NATIONS, AND WHAT MAY BE SEEN IN IT.
On the corner of Anthony street and the Points,[4] in New-York, there
stands, like a grim savage, the house of the Nine Nations, a dingy
wooden tenement, that for twenty years has threatened to tumble away
from its more upright neighbor, and before which the stranger wayfarer
is seen to stop and contemplate. In a neighborhood redolent of crime,
there it stands, its vices thick upon its head, exciting in the mind of
the observer its association with some dark and terrible deed. On the
one side, opens that area of misery, mud and sombre walls, called "Cow
Bay;" on the other a triangular plot, reeking with the garbage of the
miserable cellars that flank it, and in which swarms of wasting beings
seek a hiding-place, inhale pestilential air, and die. Gutters running
with seething matter; homeless outcasts sitting, besotted, on crazy
doorsteps; the vicious, with savage visage, and keen, watchful eye,
loitering at the doors of filthy "groceries;" the sickly and neglected
child crawling upon the side-pave, or seeking a crust to appease its
hunger--all are found here, gasping, in rags, a breath of air by day, or
seeking a shelter, at night, in dens so abject that the world can
furnish no counterpart. And this forlorn picture of dilapidated houses,
half-clad, squabbish women, blistered-faced men, and sickly children,
the house of the Nine Nations overlooks. And yet this house, to the
disgrace of an opulent people be it said, is but the sample of an
hundred others standing in the same neighborhood.
[Footnote 4: Now Worth street and Mission Place.]
With its basement-doors opening into its bottomless pit; with its
continual outgoing and ingoing of sooty and cruel-visaged denizens; with
its rickety old steps leading to the second story; with its battered
windows, begrimed walls, demolished shutters, clapboards hanging at
sixes and sevens--with its suspicious aspect;--there it stands, with its
distained sign over the doors of its bottomless pit. You may read on
this sign, that a gentleman from Ireland, who for convenience' sake we
will call Mr. Krone, is licensed to sell imported and other liquors.
Indeed the house of the Nine Nations would seem to say within itself: "I
am mother of this banquet of death you behold with your eyes." There it
stands, its stream of poison hurrying its victims to the grave; its
little dark passages leading to curious hiding-places; its caving roof,
and its ominous-looking back platform, overlooking the dead walls of
Murderers' Yard. How it mocks your philanthropy, your regal edifices,
your boasted charities--your gorgeous churches! Everybody but the
corporation knows the house of the Nine Nations, a haunt for wasted
prostitutes, assassins, burglars, thieves--every grade of criminals
known to depraved nature. The corporation would seem either to have a
charming sympathy for it, or to look upon it with that good-natured
indifference so happily illustrated while eating its oysters and
drinking its whiskey. An empty-headed corporation is sure always to
have its hands very full, which is the case with yours at this moment.
Having the people's money to waste, its own ambition to serve, and its
hat to fill with political waste paper--what more would you ask of it?
The man of the house of the Nine Nations, you ought to know, makes
criminals by the hundred, deluges your alms houses with paupers, and
makes your Potters' field reek with his victims: for this he is become
rich. Mr. Krone is an intimate friend of more than one Councilman, and a
man of much measure in the political world--that is, Mr. Krone is a
politician-maker. When you say there exists too close an intimacy
between the pugilist and the politician, Mr. Krone will bet twenty
drinks with any one of his customers that he can prove such doctrines at
fault. He can secure the election of his favorite candidate with the
same facility that he can make an hundred paupers per week. You may well
believe him a choice flower in the bouquet of the corporation; we mean
the corporation that banquets and becomes jubilant while assassins stab
their victims in the broad street--that becomes befogged while bands of
ruffians disgrace the city with their fiendish outrages--that makes
presidents and drinks whiskey when the city would seem given over to the
swell-mobsman--when no security is offered to life, and wholesale
harlotry, flaunting with naked arms and bared bosoms, passes along in
possession of Broadway by night.
It is the night succeeding the day Lady Swiggs discovered, at the house
of the Foreign Missions, the loss of her cherished donations. As this is
a world of disappointments, Lady Swiggs resigns herself to this most
galling of all, and with her Milton firmly grasped in her hand, may be
seen in a little room at Sister Scudder's, rocking herself in the
arm-chair, and wondering if Brother Spyke has captured the
robber-wretch. A chilly wind howls, and a drizzling rain falls thick
over the dingy dwellings of the Points, which, sullen and dark, seem in
a dripping mood. A glimmering light, here and there, throws curious
shadows over the liquid streets. Now the drenched form of some
half-naked and homeless being is reflected, standing shivering in the
entrance to some dark and narrow alley; then the half-crazed inebriate
hurries into the open door of a dismal cellar, or seeks eagerly a
shelter for his bewildered head, in some suspicious den. Flashing
through the shadow of the police lamp, in "Cow Bay," a forlorn female is
seen, a bottle held tightly under her shawl. Sailing as it were into the
bottomless pit of the house of the Nine Nations, then suddenly returning
with the drug, seeking the cheerless garret of her dissolute partner,
and there striving to blunt her feelings against the horrors of
starvation.
Two men stand, an umbrella over their heads, at the corner, in the glare
of the bottomless pit, which is in a blaze of light, and crowded with
savage-faced figures, of various ages and colors,--all habited in the
poison-seller's uniform of rags. "I don't think you'll find him here,
sir," says one, addressing the other, who is tall and slender of person,
and singularly timid. "God knows I am a stranger here. To-morrow I leave
for Antioch," is the reply, delivered in nervous accents. The one is
Brother Syngleton Spyke, the other Mr. Detective Fitzgerald, a man of
more than middle stature, with compact figure, firmly-knit limbs, and an
expression of countenance rather pleasant.
"You see, sir, this Toddleworth is a harmless creature, always aims to
be obliging and civil. I don't, sir--I really don't think he'll steal.
But one can't tell what a man will do who is driven to such straits as
the poor devils here are. We rather like Toddleworth at the station,
look upon him as rather wanting in the head, and for that reason rather
incline to favor him. I may say we now and then let him 'tie up' all
night in the station. And for this he seems very thankful. I may say,"
continues Mr. Fitzgerald, touching the visor of his cap, "that he always
repays with kindness any little attention we may extend to him at the
station, and at times seems too anxious to make it his home. We give him
a shirt and a few shillings now and then; and when we want to be rid of
him we begin to talk about fashionable wives. He is sure to go then.
Can't stand such a topic, I assure you, sir, and is sure to go off in a
huff when Sergeant Pottle starts it."
They enter the great door of the bottomless pit; the young missionary
hesitates. His countenance changes, his eyes scan steadily over the
scene. A room some sixty feet by twenty opens to his astonished eyes.
Its black, boarded walls, and bare beams, are enlivened here and there
with extravagant pictures of notorious pugilists, show-bills, and
illustrated advertisements of lascivious books, in which the murder of
an unfortunate woman is the principal feature. Slippery mud covers the
floor. Mr. Krone sits on an empty whiskey-barrel, his stunted features
betraying the hardened avarice of his character. He smokes his black
pipe, folds his arms deliberately, discoursing of the affairs of the
nation to two stupefied negroes and one blear-eyed son of the Emerald
Isle. Three uncouth females, with hair hanging matted over their faces,
and their features hidden in distortion, stand cooling their bared limbs
at a running faucet just inside the door, to the left. A group of
half-naked negroes lie insensible on the floor, to the right. A little
further on two prostrate females, shivering, and reeking of gin, sleep
undisturbed by the profanity that is making the very air resound. "The
gin gets a-many of us," is the mournful cry of many a wasting inebriate.
Mr. Krone, however, will tell you he has no sympathy with such cries.
You arraign, and perhaps punish, the apothecary who sells by mistake his
deadly drug. With a philosophical air, Mr. Krone will tell you he deals
out his poison without scruple, fills alms-houses without a pang of
remorse, and proves that a politician-maker may do much to degrade
society and remain in high favor with his friends of the bench of
justice. On one side of the dungeon-like place stands a rickety old
counter, behind which three savage-faced men stand, filling and serving
incessant potions of deleterious liquor to the miserable beings, haggard
and ragged, crowding to be first served. Behind the bar, or counter,
rises a pyramid of dingy shelves, on which are arranged little painted
kegs, labelled, and made bright by the glaring gas-light reflected upon
them. On the opposite side, on rows of slab benches, sit a group of
motley beings,--the young girl and the old man, the negro and the frail
white,--half sleeping, half conscious; all imbibing the stifling
draught.
Like revelling witches in rags, and seen through the bedimmed atmosphere
at the further end of the den, are half-frantic men, women, and girls,
now sitting at deal tables, playing for drinks, now jostling, jeering,
and profaning in wild disorder. A girl of sixteen, wasted and deformed
with dissipation, approaches Brother Spyke, extends her blanched hand,
and importunes him for gin. He shudders, and shrinks from her touch, as
from a reptile. A look of scorn, and she turns from him, and is lost
among the grotesque crowd in the distance.
"This gin," says Mr. Fitzgerald, turning methodically to Brother Spyke,
"they make do for food and clothing. We used to call this the devil's
paradise. As to Krone, we used to call him the devil's bar-tender. These
ragged revellers, you see, beg and steal during the day, and get gin
with it at night. Krone thinks nothing of it! Lord bless your soul, sir!
why, this man is reckoned a tip-top politician; on an emergency he can
turn up such a lot of votes!" Mr. Fitzgerald, approaching Mr. Krone,
says "you're a pretty fellow. Keeping such a place as this!" The
detective playfully strikes the hat of the other, crowding it over his
eyes, and inquiring if he has seen Tom Toddleworth during the day. Mr.
Toddleworth was not seen during the day. No one in the bottomless pit
knows where he may be found. A dozen husky voices are heard to say, he
has no home--stores himself away anywhere, and may be found everywhere.
Brother Spyke bows, and sighs. Mr. Fitzgerald says: "he is always
harmless--this Toddleworth." As the two searchers are about to withdraw,
the shrunken figure of a woman rushes wildly into the pit. "Devils!
devils!--hideous devils of darkness! here you are--still
hover--hover--hovering; turning midnight into revelling, day into horrid
dreaming!" she shrieks at the top of her voice. Now she pauses suddenly,
and with a demoniacal laugh sets her dull, glassy eyes on Mr. Krone,
then walks round him with clenched fists and threatening gestures. The
politician-maker sits unmoved. Now she throws her hair about her bare
breasts, turns her eyes upward, imploringly, and approaches Brother
Spyke, with hand extended. Her tale of sorrow and suffering is written
in her very look. "She won't hurt you--never harms anybody;" says Mr.
Fitzgerald, methodically, observing Brother Spyke's timidity.
"No, no, no," she mutters incoherently, "you are not of this place--you
know, like the rich world up-town, little of these revelling devils.
Cling! yes, cling to the wise one--tell him to keep you from this, and
forever be your teacher. Tell him! tell him! oh! tell him!" She wrings
her hands, and having sailed as it were into the further end of the pit,
vaults back, and commences a series of wild gyrations round Mr. Krone.
"Poor wretch!" says Brother Spyke, complacently, "the gin has dried up
her senses--made her what she is."
"Maniac Munday! Maniac Munday!" suddenly echoes and re-echoes through
the pit. She turns her ear, and with a listless countenance listens
attentively, then breaks out into an hysterical laugh. "Yes! ye
loathsome denizens. Like me, no one seeks you, no one cares for you. I
am poor, poor maniac Munday. The maniac that one fell error brought to
this awful end." Again she lowers her voice, flings her hair back over
her shoulders, and gives vent to her tears. Like one burdened with
sorrow she commences humming an air, that even in this dark den floats
sweetly through the polluted atmosphere. "Well, I am what I am," she
sighs, having paused in her tune. "That one fatal step--that plighted
faith! How bitter to look back." Her bony fingers wander to her lips,
which she commences biting and fretting, as her countenance becomes pale
and corpse-like. Again her reason takes its flight. She staggers to the
drenched counter, holds forth her bottle, lays her last sixpence
tauntingly upon the board, and watches with glassy eyes the drawing of
the poisonous drug. Meanwhile Mr. Krone, with an imprecation, declares
he has power to elect his candidate to the Senate. The man behind the
counter--the man of savage face, has filled the maniac's bottle, which
he pushes toward her with one hand, as with the other he sweeps her coin
into a drawer. "Oh! save poor maniac Munday--save poor maniac Munday!"
the woman cries, like one in despair, clutching the bottle, and reels
out of the pit.