CHAPTER XVIII.

Julia Antrim and other Old Acquaintances

The Penitentiary--the Visit to Mrs. May

Stella May in her New Home

Julia Antrim's Story

Names and Characters for Life Scenes

Invitation to a Party

Going to be Married

Visit to Mrs. De Vrai--Mrs. Meltrand--Agnes and Adaleta

CHAPTER THE LAST.

"She is Gone, Sir!"

The Death-bed--Little Sissee

The Wedding Party at Mrs. Morgan's

Who is the Bride?--The Double Marriage

Greenwood Cemetery--the Grave

"'Tis the Last of Earth"

"Will he Come?"

In the Dark Grave Sleeping--a Poem

A Voice from the Grave--a Poem

The Last Word

HOT CORN.

LIFE SCENES IN NEW YORK ILLUSTRATED.

CHAPTER I.

OUR TITLE.--THE STORY.

"How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature."

"It is a queer title for a book; what can it mean?" is the exclamation

of those who open it for the first time.

Visit this city--walk with me from nine o'clock till midnight, through

the streets of New York, in the month of August, then read the first

interview of the author with little Katy, the Hot Corn girl, and the

story of her life, and you will not ask, "What does it mean?" But you

may ask, what does it mean that I see so many squalid-looking women, so

many tender children, so many boys, who with well directed labor might

work their way to fortune; or crippled men, sitting upon the stone steps

along the street crying, "Hot corn! here's your nice hot corn--smoking

hot, smoking hot, just from the pot!" Your heart, if it has not grown

callous, will be pained as mine has been at the sights of misery you

will meet with, and you will then exclaim, "What does it mean that I see

these things in the very heart of this great commercial city, where

wealth, luxury, extravagance, all abound in such profusion? Surely the

condition of the people, the ways and wants of the poor, cannot be

known, or they would be improved. Why does not somebody write a book

illustrating these 'Life Scenes in New York,' whose every page shall be

a cry, startling as this of 'Hot corn, hot corn!' now pealing in the

midnight air?"

So thought I; and so straightway set about the work, with ample material

at hand, and more accumulating at every step. In writing a book, the

first thought of the author is, what shall be my title? What better

could I have than HOT CORN, since that was the inciting cry that waked

my pen to action, to paint these life scenes in vivid pictures, for the

world to look at and improve?

If, in my daily walks and midnight rambles, I have seen revolting

sights, the details of which are harrowing to your soul as you read, so

much the more need that they be opened to your view. Wounds must be seen

to be healed. Old sores are often pronounced incurable, simply because

they are old.

First, strip off their dirty covering, then probe and wash, and then

apply the healing balsam. If not already gangrened from long neglect,

you may save the patient's life, and at all events, ease his suffering,

and smooth his road to the grave.

Be mine the task to strip and expose, and yours to wash and heal.

Of just such life scenes as I depict, there are enough transpiring every

night to fill a volume.

Come, walk with me, of an August evening, from the Battery to Union

Square, and you shall see all the characters of a romance.

'Tis concert night at Castle Garden. Stand here a short half hour, and

look at the gay and smiling throng. There is material for many a tale.

Three thousand robes of fine cloth, silks, gauze, and lace, pass the

Battery gates in one night, fluttering to the open sea breeze, without

one thought from those who wear them for the poor little girl that sits

shivering by the path, crying hot corn, or vainly striving to beg one

penny from the overflowing purses that freely give dollars for

amusement, and less than nothing to misery, or for its annihilation.

Little do they think that this child has a mother at home, who once

counted one in just such a thoughtless throng.

Here might a chapter be written, but let us on; we shall find plenty of

subjects. If we stop to write the history of that little girl and her

mother, we shall fill our book before we start.

The Philadelphia boat has just landed her passengers at Pier No. 1.,

North River, and the crowd are coming up Battery Place. Here is a

picture of American character. Every one is pushing forward as though

there was but one bed left in the city, and to obtain that he intended

to outstride and overreach all his fellow travellers. Take care, little

hot corn girl, or you will be run over, and your store trampled

under-foot. Bitter tears for your loss will run down your hollow

cheeks, but they will gain you no sympathy. The only answer that you

will get, will be, "Why didn't you get out of the way, you little dirty

brat--good enough for you." Yes, good enough for you, that you have lost

your entire stock of merchandize; what business had you in the way of

commerce, or path of pleasure?

"But, sir," says benevolence in a drab bonnet, "you have hurt the

child."

"What if I have? She has no business in the way. She is nothing but a

hot corn girl; they are no better than beggars and often are little

thieves. Why don't she stay at home?" Sure enough. Simply because

necessity or cruelty drives her into the street. Now your cruelty will

drive her home to be beaten by a drunken father, for your act of wanton

carelessness.

Stand aside, my little sufferer, or you will be run over again. Here

comes a little dark skinned, black-eyed, black-haired man, with life and

death in his very step.

What magic power impels him forward. He is a Jew--a dealer in

second-hand clothes. Surely his business cannot be so important that he

need to upset little children, or step on the gouty toes of slow-going

old gentlemen, in his hurry to get forward.

It is Friday night, his Sabbath has already commenced, he can do no

business--make no monish--to-night. He is not in a hurry to reach the

synagogue, that is closed, what then? He has a Christian partner, and he

wants to arrange a little speculation for to-morrow. He has just

received information of a shipment of yellow fever patients' clothing,

which will arrive to-morrow or Sunday, and he wants his Christian

partner to look out on Saturday; on Sunday, the Jew will watch the

chance to buy the infected rags, which both will sell on Monday at a

hundred per cent profit.

"What, at the risk of human life? Oh, I can believe that of a Jew, but

certainly no Christian would do it."

There spoke the Christian reader. The Jew will say the same, only

reversing the character. No good Christian or Jew either will do it; yet

it will be done, and little beggar girls will be run over in the hot

haste to meet the coming ship.

Walk on. The side-walks are crowded, and the street between the

curb-stones full of great lumbering omnibuses and carriages, that go up

and down all night for hire; but there is a melancholy stillness in all

the houses where wealth and fashion, in our young days, lived in

lamp-lighted parlors, and diamonds flashed down upon the listener to

music which had its home in these gay dwellings, where happy looking

faces were seen through open windows. Iron shutters close them now, and

commerce wears a dark frown by gas light.

On the right is Wall street, where fortunes are made and lost as by the

turn of a card, or rattle of a dice box. It is very thronged at noon

day. It is very dull now. A few watchmen tread slowly around the great

banking houses, working for a dollar a night to eke out a poorly paid

day, by guarding treasures that the owners would not watch all the live

long night for all the watchman is worth. But he must watch and work; he

has a sick wife at home, and four little girls are growing up to

womanhood and city life. God knows for what!

A few express wagons, and more of these ever-going ever-coming

omnibuses, are coming out of Wall street to join the great Broadway

throng. And a pale-faced little girl sits upon the steps of the Bank of

the Republic, adding to that constant cry, "Hot corn! Hot corn!" Now

here comes the Cerberus of this money palace. What possible harm to his

treasures, can this little poverty-clad girl and her sickly looking

little beggar boy brother do, sitting here upon the cold grey, stone

steps, with an appealing look to every passer-by to give a penny or buy

an ear of corn. Does he think they are merely using their trade to plot

mischief and schemes to rob his vaults of their stores of gold? One

would judge so by the way he growls at them.

"Clear out, you dirty brats--away with you, lousy beggars--home to your

kennel, young thieves. Don't come on these steps again, or I will throw

your corn in the gutter."

Are these the words to work reform? They are such as fall every day and

night upon the ear of just such specimens of the young sprouts of

humanity, that vegetate and grow a brief summer in the city, dying in

some of the chill winters of neglect, that come over their tender years,

blighting, freezing, killing. How little of the gold, Cerberus guards,

would serve to warm these two young children into useful life. How

little those who guard or use it, care for those they drive unfeelingly

away from their door steps--for what? They have made it a place of

convenience for their nightly trade. Tired of walking, carrying a heavy

pail between them--heavy to them--it would be light, and were it all

gold, compared with that within--they have sat themselves down, and just

uttered one brief cry of "Hot corn, here's your nice hot corn!" when

they are roughly ordered to "clear out, you dirty brats." Yes, they are

dirty, poor, and miserable, children of a drunken father--who made them

so? No matter. They are so, and little has that gold done to make them

otherwise.

"Clear out--get off these steps, or I will kick you off."

They did so, and went over to the other side of Broadway, and clung to

that strong iron fence, and looked up three hundred feet along that

spire which points to heaven from Trinity church. Did they think of the

half million of dollars there piled up, to tell the world of the wealth

of New York city? No, they thought of the poor, wretched room, to them

their only home, a little way down Rector street, scarcely a stone's

throw from this great pile, in a house, owned and rented to its poor

occupants by that great land monopoly, the Rectory of this great church.

"Bill," says the girl, "do you see that gal? how fine she is tittivated

up. Don't she look like a lady? I know who she is, Bill. Do you think

when I gets a little bigger, the old woman is going to keep me in the

street all day and half the night, peddling peanuts and selling hot

corn? No, sir-ee. I will dress as fine as she does, and go to balls and

theatres, and have good suppers and wine, at Taylor's, and lay a-bed

next day just as long as I please. Why not? I am as good-looking, if I

was dressed up, as she is."

"Why, Sal, how will you do that? You ha'n't got no good clothes, and

mother ha'n't got none, and if she had, she wouldn't give 'em to ye."

"I don't care, I know how to get them. I know the woman that owns every

rag that street gal has got on her back."

"Them ain't rags, them's silk, and just as good dress as them opera gals

had on, that went stringing along down Broadway a while ago. I don't see

how you can get sich, 'less you prig 'em. I'd do that if I had a chance,

blessed quick. How'd she get 'em, Sal?"

"I knows, and that's 'nuff."

Why should she not know? She had been to school long enough to learn,

and would be a very inapt scholar if she had not learned some of the

ways of the street, in thirteen years. In thirteen years more she will

be a fit subject to excite the care of the Moral Reform Society, or

become the inmate of a Mary Magdalene asylum; perchance, of Randall's

Island.

There is a history about these two children and their parents, which you

may read by and by. We cannot stop, now. Let us walk on. Iron

shutters--bolted, barred, and strong locked doors, what piles of

treasure lie just within.

At Maiden lane on the right, and Courtlandt street on the left, more

omnibuses come up, crowding their way into an already overfull

"Broadway."

Oh! what a scream. It is a woman's scream. A cry of anguish--of horror,

that chills the blood. It comes from the apple woman at the corner, and

yet she is not hurt. No one is near her, the crowd is rushing to the

centre of the street. What for? An omnibus has run over a drunken man.

This is always enough to excite the sympathy of woman, and make her cry

out as with pain. It is pain, the worst of pain; it comes from a blow

upon the heart; worse than that, in this case, for the man is her

husband. He has just left her, where he has been tormenting her for an

hour, begging, coaxing, pleading, promising, that if she would give him

one shilling, he would go directly home and go to bed, as soon as he got

something to eat. "Something to drink." No. Upon his word, he would not

touch another drop the blessed night. She well knew the value of such

promises. She well knew that the corner grocery, where he would stop to

buy the loaf of bread, which he promised to share with the two children,

kept a row of glistening glasses and decanters upon the same shelf with

the loaves. "The staff of life," and life's destroyer, side by side. She

knew his appetite--she knew the temptation to which he would be

subjected, she knew he could not resist, she knew the vampire who dealt

in life and death, would suck up that shilling, if with it came the

heart's blood of him, her, and their two children. She knew her husband,

he could not resist the temptation. Once sober and he could keep so, if

the means of intoxication were kept out of his sight. Once drunk and he

would keep so, as long as he could obtain a shilling to pay for the

poison. His last resource was to beg from his wife's scanty profits, by

which she mainly supported the family, who often went supperless to bed,

for the rent must be paid. Landlords are inexorable. Hers was worth so

many millions that the income was a source of great care, how it should

be disposed of. Her rent was coming due, and every shilling looked to

her of tenfold value to-night. Her children are in the street, filling

the night air with an appealing cry, "Hot corn, hot corn, who'll buy my

nice hot corn?" Her husband was begging for one more shilling to

waste--worse than waste--to close an ill-spent day. Oh, what a contrast

between this and their wedding day!

She resisted his importunity until he found 'twas no avail, and then he

swore he would upset her little store in the gutter, if she did not give

him the money. What could she do? She would not call an officer to take

him away. No, she could not do that, he was her husband. She could not

resist him, could not have an altercation in the street, that would draw

an idle crowd around her, spoil her trade, and worse than that, let the

world know that this bloated, ill-looking, miserable remnant of a man,

was her husband. Shame did what persuasion or fear could not: she gave

him the shilling, and he started to cross the crowded street. He heeded

little of danger--he had often crossed when more drunk than now--he

heeded not the tripartite crush of carriages coming up and going down

these streets, all meeting in a sort of vortex at that point. He heard,

or heeded not, the drivers, "hi, hi, hi, get out of the way, you drunken

son of a----," and down he went among the horses' clattering feet, upon

the slippery stones, and the wheels passed over him, crushing

bones--human bones, and mangling flesh, and mixing human blood with

street dirt.

The omnibuses turned aside, the passengers shuddered as the poor wretch

was lifted up, covered with blood and dirt, and inquired, "Is he dead?"

The drivers looked down coolly from their high seats, with a consoling

remark, that, "it's nothing but a drunken man," yet, that drunken man

was that woman's husband; him who, fourteen years ago, walked the

streets as well dressed, as proud, as sober as any in the crowd who now

gaze carelessly upon his bruised form, and hear the remark, that he, "is

nothing but a drunken man."

Fourteen years ago--yes, this very night--that woman walked this very

street, arm in arm, with that man, and heard him, for the first time,

call her wife. It was a happy time then, and "all was merry as the

marriage bell." Little thought they then--less thought they a year

afterwards, while rocking the cradle in their own happy home, that the

time would come when he would raise his hand in anger to strike that

loving wife, or that child would be driven, with kicks and curses, into

the streets, or that he would lie bleeding upon the pavement he had so

often and so proudly trod before, a poor mangled drunkard.

Oh how those words--joyous words--first rung in that happy mother's

ears, when the proud father said:--

"Have you got a baby?"

"Yes, Willie, _we_ have got a baby."

How these words have rung like electric sparks through many a happy

heart.

"Have you got a baby?" said a little girl to a gentleman riding out of

Boston. It was a queer question, arising as it did from a child he

overtook on the road. How his city friends would have laughed at him if

they had heard the question--"Have you got a baby?" No he had got no

baby, yet he was a man full forty years of age, and looked as though he

might have been a father, and so thought the little girl. Yet he had no

baby. Why? He was a bachelor! So he had to answer, "no, my pretty miss,

I have got no baby." "Oh la, haven't you? Well _we_ have. We have got a

baby at _our_ house!!"

This was not interesting to a bachelor. How different it would have been

if he had married Lucy Smith, whom he intended to a dozen years ago, but

he was too busy then--too intent upon making money enough, to support a

wife before he got one. Nonsense! How little he knew of the sweet music

of the words, "have you got a baby?" How her heart would have leaped up

and choked her utterance if she had now been riding by his side as his

wife, instead of his "old flame," Lucy Smith! Lucy Smith, still, for she

had never heard those words touchingly applied to her, "have you got a

baby?" nor had she ever heard a sweet little girl say of her, "we have

got a baby at our house!"

How many a mother's heart has leapt for joy, at that question, when she

could answer it, "Yes, I _have_ got a baby!" How many a father's

heart will be touched with emotion when he reads, "Have you got a baby?"

for he will think as I do, of a time when, returning from a long

journey, he meets just such a little cherub of a girl at his own gate,

who does not stop to ask him how he does, nor climb his knee for the

accustomed kiss, so exuberant is her joy--so anxious is she to possess

him with the secret that wells up and fills her very existence to

overflowing, so that she must speak or burst, and hence she watches for

Papa, and runs out to meet him at the gate with such a smile--such a

joyous, glorious smile, and cry of "Oh, Papa, we have got a baby!!" How

many a mother's heart will swell and throb, and how the warm

tears--tears of joy and gladness--will flow as she hears that husband's

footstep approach, for she knows he will say, "_Have_ you got a baby?"

But there is no such joy now for that mother's heart. Yet that is the

same father--fallen, trampled, dying, and she rushes to the rescue.

Two police officers bear him to the side-walk and lift him, lifeless as

he is, upon a hand-cart. How the idle crowd push and jostle each other

to get a sight of the wounded man. What for? To administer to his wants;

to give, if need be, something to minister to his relief? No. To gratify

curiosity--morbid, idle curiosity.

How this woman pushes and struggles to break the circle, crying, "Let me

in, let me in; let me see him." How little the crowd heed her. They

think it is curiosity, too, nothing but curiosity, that impels her, as

it does themselves.

Why don't she say, "It is my husband?" and then they would give her

room, or the officers would make them. Why! why don't she say it? She is

ashamed to tell unfeeling hearts how low she has been sunk in the world

since first she called that man by that name, or heard those

heart-touching words when their first child was born.

Husband was a sweet word once; it is a bitter one now; yet it must be

spoken, for they are about to bear him away to the hospital. Whether

dead or alive she knows not, and she rushes madly forward, seizing the

policeman, with a cry of, "No, no; not there, not there; take him home,

I will take care of him--nobody can take care of him so well as I can.

Oh, let me take him home! Do let me take him home." What could she do

with him in her one room, the home of herself and children. She could

not stay to nurse him day after day, for then her trade would be lost;

somebody else would take her stand; there would be no income, all would

be outgo, and all would soon be exhausted; nothing to buy bread, nothing

to pay rent, and then out must go the whole, sick or well; they must go

in the street if they fail to meet that dreaded periodical--the rent

day. There is no help for it. All this is hastily considered, and there

is no other way; he must go to the hospital. 'Tis a blessed

institution--a noble honor to the city, charitably sustained, to give

relief to--who? A thousand just such subjects as this; made drunk,

covered with gore, maimed with broken limbs, by a legalized traffic in

hell's best aid on earth. A trade that fills jails, thieves-dens, and

brothels, and furnishes subjects like this for hospitals.

"He must go to the hospital."

"Then I will follow and nurse him there."

There spoke the wife, as, ever since that holy name was known, the wife

has spoken--can speak alone.

How can she go?

Something clings to her dress and pulls her back. She looks around upon

a little boy and girl--it is the hot corn girl, just driven from the

banking-house steps three squares below.

"Mother, mother, do speak to us; it is Bill and me. Is father dead? What

killed him?"

Rum! She did not say so. She only thought. She thought, too, of her

helpless children, and what would they do if she went to take care of

their father. She did not think of the blows, the kicks, and cuffs, and

curses, received from him during long bitter years, for they were given

by--not by him--not by her husband--but by the demon in him--the devil

engendered by rum. She thought nothing of the cruel neglect and poverty

and suffering of herself and children, for that was a sequence of the

other. She did think of this night, fourteen years ago. She did think of

the night when this girl, now clinging to her dress and convulsively

crying, "Mother, is he dead," was born, for then she was a happy wife

and mother. Then that father took that child in his arms and kissed and

blessed it--then he took her in his arms and kissed and loved her, and

called her his dear wife. She did not think of the night when that

little slender boy, now ten years old, was born, for then a devil--not a

husband--dragged her by the hair, while in labor, from her poor cot,

and bid her go out in the pitiless storm to fill his bottle for him. No,

she did not remember that; she only remembered that he was her husband;

wounded, dying husband, in need of some kind hand to make his bed and

smooth his passage to the grave, and she would leave all without a

thought to follow him to the hospital. She was his wife. Now there is a

struggle between duty and affection--between husband and children. She

cannot go with both. One must be neglected; which shall it be? Had the

husband been what he was when that girl was born, the heart of many a

wife would give the ready answer. She looked upon her and remembered the

time when she first heard these words, "Have you got a baby?" She looked

upon her, and all intervening time faded from memory, and she thought

and felt as she would have felt if he had been struck down that night.

She tears herself away from the grasp of the little girl, telling her to

pick up the apples and go home, she must go with father.

Another hand clings to her dress, and looks up with such an appealing

look and says:--

"Don't go, mother; they will take care of father. Don't leave us."

She looked upon her sickly boy, and thought of the night he was born.

Why does she start and turn round? Did some one pull her by the hair?

No, it was only fancy. A sort of magnetic influence, linked with

thought. That twinge decided her. That twinge decided his fate, and

saved her children's lives. She went home with them, and tired nature

slept in spite of mental agony. At four o'clock the bells rung for fire;

it was long before she could wake sufficiently to count the eight

strokes which told it was in her district. Dreamily unconscious of

danger, she moves not till she hears a crash and sees a light through

the small rear window, when she springs up, opens the door, looks out in

the direction of the stairs, and meets a burst of flame and smoke coming

up. Back, back to the bed, closing the door--a thin pine door--the only

barrier between the fire and her sleeping babes, she drags them out and

up to the window. Will she throw them down upon the pavement below, as

the only hope of saving their lives, for the fire is fairly up the

stairs and rattling at the door behind her? If it enters all is lost.

The window is opened, and the little boy first--he is the

darling--poised upon the sill, in the bewildered amazement of

half-awaking consciousness.

"Oh mother, mother, don't throw me out! I will be a good boy, mother. I

never will tear my jacket again. Indeed I could not help it. It was a

big boy that pulled me. Oh, mother, mother, don't, pray don't."

He screams with fear, as he hangs convulsively upon his mother's neck,

and looks down upon the gathering crowd, crying, "Throw him out, throw

him out; we will catch him." And a hundred hands are outstretched, a

hundred noble hearts would prostrate themselves upon the pavement to

save, to break the fall of a beggar boy whom they would have kicked out

of their path the day before. Now a mother appeals to her fellow men to

save her child. She had oft appealed before, but then the house was not

on fire; the fire was in his father's mouth--and that they heeded not.

No bells rung, to call the engines with copious streams of water to put

it out--they are ringing now. And now see the outstretched hands, each

ready to risk its own life to save that of a child.

[Illustration: THE NEW-YORK FIREMAN.--_Page 30._]

"Let him go--throw him out--you will all burn up in five minutes

more--this old wooden house burns like tinder."

She looks behind her; the flame is sending serpent tongues under the

door. Her dress upon a chair is on fire--now the bed. They must jump,

naked too, down among those men, or die.

"Hold on! hold on! Way there--give way there. Hurrah, men! lively now!"

Oh, that was a sight for that mother and her two children. A ladder

company thundered down the street with their cry of "Way there!" for

they have caught the sight of a woman and children in distress; and oh!

how they do press forward, shouting, "Way there! lively now! Hold on, we

will save you!" How quick, after they reach the spot, a ladder is

loosened and off the carriage, with one end on the ground and the other

going up, up--"Up with her now!" and so they do. Before it has found a

resting-place, a man, active as a cat, is halfway up. Now he is at the

top; now--hurrah!--how the shouts rend the air, for he has the boy in

one arm and the girl in the other, and tells the mother to follow. She

hesitates. What for? The noble fireman sees at a glance, stops a moment,

pulls off his coat and throws it to her--"now"--down they go--now they

are safe. Safe with life--not a thing else on earth but her two

fatherless children, her only covering a fireman's coat. Where is her

husband now? Where he will never see them again; for while his attendant

slept he tore the bandages from his wound, and then slept himself--a

sleep that one voice alone will awaken. Judge him not harshly; he was

the victim, not the criminal. He is dead now, tread lightly upon his

grave.

Look to his wife and children. It is they who need your sympathy. Raised

in the worst school on earth--the streets of this city, some of the Life

Scenes of which I aim to depict--the boy has already learned to "prig;"

and, so he shared the proceeds with his father--that father, or rather

the monster who made him a devil, would encourage the boy to be a thief.

What could the mother do to counteract such deleterious influence? All

day she must stand at her corner, selling fruit, pea-nuts, and candy, to

make bread to feed her else starving offspring, and to keep her husband

out of the prison or alms-house.

You have already seen the effect of the street education upon Sally; the

sight of her playmate, Julia Antrim, dressed in silks and laces,

although borrowed--no, furnished, by "the woman," on hire, for a purpose

more wicked than murder, for murder only kills the body--has already

tempted her towards the same road--to that broad path to woe; not in the

future, but here present with us every day; and she has already

determined that she will follow it as soon as "she gets big enough."

Who shall rescue her?

The danger is still more imminent now. Houseless, naked, starving in the

street, how shall she live? One step, one resolution, will take her to

the clothes-lending harpy, who fattens upon the life-blood of young

girls, whom she dooms to the fate of Ixion for the remainder of their

lives; for her garments are the shirts of Nessus to all who wear them.

She feels that she _is_ big enough now--big enough to begin. Younger

girls than her are night-walkers. Julia is no older, and but little

bigger, and she has often stopped in her walk to eat hot corn or

pea-nuts with Sally, and show her shining gold, trying to tempt her to

go and do likewise. She has an interest, too, in the temptation, for she

has told Mrs. Brown of her old playmate, Sally Eaton, and how

good-looking she was; and Mrs. Brown has been to see her, has bought her

merchandise, and spoken words of soul-trapping flattery, and promised

Julia a present of a new silk dress--that is, just as good as new, it

had just been bought by a girl whom she turned out of doors because she

could not pay her way--if she will coax Sally to come and live with her.

And so she has been sorely tempted. Eve was so, and fell.

These tempting words are now running through the brain of Sally, as she

stands in the crowd, wrapt in a blanket, kindly lent her, with her

mother and little Willie, looking at their home and every earthly thing

going up in flame and smoke heavenward. Her mother weeps, for the first

time in long years. Long, long, had she steeled her heart against such

indulgence; its pent up fountains burst now. Not for grief; no, they

were tears, such as she shed when that girl was born. How she cried,

and thanked God, and pressed the hand of the fireman and thanked him for

saving her children's lives, dearer to her than all her household goods.

How little he thought of the noble act. He almost repulsed her and her

gratitude.

"There, that'll do, old woman. You had better be getting in somewhere."

Somewhere! Yes, somewhere! Where?

That is the question. The crowd shout at the heroic deeds of the

firemen, and would carry them in triumph through the streets, or bring

out baskets of champaigne to drink libations to their honor, for saving

two helpless children from the flames. Saved for what? To stand naked in

the street! No. Let them go to their friends. They have none. Yes, they

have, but not relatives. A few dollars are put into the mother's hand,

but who will take her in? who will give her a home? One that three years

ago had no home himself. One who had been more drunken than Bill

Eaton--had been drunk for forty years. He is sober now--you shall hear

directly how he became so.

A man advanced in years, say more than half a century, followed by a

tall, fine-formed, well-dressed, bright-eyed girl, about one-third her

father's age, press through the crowd to where the widow and her

children stand, take them by the hand and lead on, with the simple

words, "Come with us."

It needs but few such words, spoken in such kind tones, to the afflicted

to lead them into paths of peace, and hope, and joy.

The mother went forward with a sort of mechanical motion of the limbs,

unaided by any impulse of the mind. Willie followed, as the lamb follows

the ewe, whether to green fields or the butcher's shambles.

Sally was more independent. She was on the point of being entirely so,

but a moment before. Now she clung to her girlish companion, as the

wrecked mariner to hope. Had hope come one minute later, she had been

led by the tempter that was gnawing at her heart-strings, to slip away

from her mother, and in one hour afterwards, she would have been

knocking at the ever-ready-to-open door of Mrs. Brown, and once passing

that threshold, woe, woe, woe, had been written upon every page of her

life. Once having passed that door, every other but its like had been

closed against her for ever. For the sin of entering that door, in her

young years, the world would never forgive her. No matter, that gaudily

dressed and luxuriously fed tempters had beset her and led her in. Such

tempters--such school teachers for city children are allowed to

monopolise the Broadway sidewalks, and hold their infant evening

schools, if not by authority of the common council, at least by

permission and countenance of the chief of police and all his "stars."

No Proserpine can walk this street at night alone, without meeting, or

at least subjecting herself to, the sad fate of Proserpine of old.

Few of those we meet in our late walks, are Proserpines or Vestas;

although they may be goddesses of fire.

Seek not to lift the veil, you will find Pandora there; Blame not the

girl who got her teachings in such a street, if, in her deep adversity

she was tempted--tempted to leave that mother and brother, and slip away

in the crowd, to go where she knew she would find a home. Where else

should she go? She knew of none. No one of all that crowd offered to

take her home with him. She had no hope. She was a fit subject for

despair, and despair is the father of temptation. What a blessed thing

is hope, charity, and a will to do good; when it flows from one young

girl to another!

But who is it says, "come with us?" The voice seemed familiar, and yet

not familiar to Sally's ear. If the person had been clothed in such a

garb of poverty as she herself had always worn, she would have known

her, although it was three years since they had met. She was not; she

wore a neat tidy calico frock, and clean white sun-bonnet, hastily put

on, and altogether looked so neat, so smart, so comfortable, as though

she had a home which she meant to take them to, when she said, "come

with us," that the tempter's spell was broken. Sally would not have gone

with Julia Antrim, for all her gold and silks, good suppers and other

enjoyments. The words were few and common-place. How often the mother

and children had heard them before--"come with us." But they never

sounded as they did this night. There is something in the tone, as well

as words. There is a magnetic power in kindness. Kind words are always

winning, whether from friend or stranger. These came from strangers. Not

altogether so; the man had been one of the drunken companions of Bill

Eaton; had helped to make him such, and now he was going to pay part of

the damage to his family. The girl, in her father's drunken days, had

been one of Sally's street companions; they had begged, and stole, and

peddled hot corn and pea-nuts together. But Sally knew her not. How

could she? Then she was, ragged and dirty, far worse than Sally; her

parents were far poorer, and lived in a worse room, one of the worst in

Centre street, and both of them were great drunkards, and she was, so

everybody said, "the worse child that ever run unhung."

How could she know the well behaved, nice looking young lady, walking by

her side. But she did know that she spoke kind words in a sweet tone,

and her heart was touched, and she went on with a light step. That

blanket wrapped a happier heart that night, than ever fluttered under

the silk dress of her former playmate, Julia Antrim.

They went on; the old man gave his arm to the widow and led the little

boy; the daughter walked with Sally. They enter the _front_ door of a

good house--when did either ever enter the front door before--up one

flight of clean stairs, and there is their home, a room, and two

bed-rooms, and kitchen; small to be sure, but a most comfortable home,

for the old man and his daughter. He was a carpenter, and made from a

dollar and a half to two dollars a day; she was a stock-maker, and could

earn from three to five dollars a week, enough to pay nearly all

expenses. "Three years ago," said he, "I was the most hopeless drunkard

that ever tumbled into a Centre street cellar. And my wife--but no

matter--she is in heaven now. All that girl's work. She reformed us; she

made me a sober man, and, God willing, I shall never fill a drunkard's

grave."

"Oh, if she could only reform my husband, how I would bless her."

"It is too late."

"No, no; it is never too late; while there is life there is hope."

"Yes, true; but--"

"But what? what is it? what do you know?"

"Why, you see, ma'am, I was in the crowd last night when the accident

happened. It was me that first picked him up; and so, you see, I went up

with him. It was me that told you that you couldn't go, 'cause I knew

how 'twas with the children, and how you hadn't much to do with at home;

for I had been sort o' watching Bill, and he had promised to go with me

this very night to sign the pledge; and so, you see, I went up with him,

and they dressed his wounds, and I knew he wouldn't get over it, his

blood was so bad, and it was so warm; but he might have lived a while,

and so when they got things fixed, I thought I would come down and tell

you about it; but just as I got down to the gate, a fellow came running

after me to go back--it was a'most morning then--and so back I went.

They said he had got crazy while I was in the room with another old

friend, and when--when I--I--"

"Yes, I see; he is dead."

"Yes; he is dead. When I came back he was about gone, but he was just as

rational as I am now. 'Oh, Jim,' said he, 'Jim Reagan, if I had only

taken the pledge when you did, I should have been a man now. But I am

glad I am going. My folks will be a great deal better off without me.'"

"Oh, no, no, no! he was my husband--their father--he might have

reformed."

"Tell them," said he, "that I am dying, and that for the first time in

ten years I feel as though I had my senses. If I could see them and know

they forgave me all the wrongs I have inflicted upon them! Do you think

my wife could forgive--"

"Yes, yes; everything, everything."

"So I told him, and that seemed to quiet him. And then I begged him to

forgive me for what I had done towards making him a drunkard. 'Oh,' says

he, 'I can forgive everybody--even those who used to sell it to us, who

used to take the bread out of our children's mouths for liquor, but I

never can forgive those who made the law, or licensed them to murder us.

I forgive everybody else that ever injured me, and I die in peace. Tell

my wife I die loving her. God bless her and my poor children, what will

become of them? Good bye, Jim; go and see my wife, and tell her good

bye, and that I die as I wish I had lived; but it is too late, too late.

God bless my wife!'

"I could not speak, I turned my eyes away a minute, looked again, and

poor Bill Eaton was gone--gone to Heaven, I am sure, if sincere

repentance would take him there. Well, you see, I could not do anything

more for poor Bill, for he was gone where we must all go pretty soon,

and so I come down and waked up Maggie."

There was a start--a sudden wakening up to consciousness on the part of

Sally, she had recognised the name.

"And says I, Maggie, daughter, come get up, and go with me to see a poor

widow and children in distress. Oh, I wish you could have seen how she

bounded out of bed--we sleep in beds, good clean beds, now, and how

quick she dressed herself, and how neat, and cheerful, and pretty she

looked, and how sweetly she said, 'now, father, I am ready, who is it?'

and when I told her, how her heart bounded with joy, and then she told

me she knew Sally, but had not seen her for a long time, and so, arm in

arm, we went out, and you know the rest. Poor Bill!"

"Oh, that I could have seen him--could have heard him speak soberly and

affectionately once more--I think I could have given him up without a

murmur."

"No. You would not have been willing to give him up to die, just as he

had begun to live. Be content, you must not murmur. Who knows but all

this overwhelming affliction will work together for your good, and your

children's good."

"Yes, mother, I am sure it will for mine. It has already, for I will be

like Maggie; don't you remember Maggie?"

"No. I don't recollect but one Maggie--'Wild Maggie of the Five

Points'--the most mischievous, ragged, dirty little beggar in all that

dreadful neighborhood; and her father, the most filthy drunkard I ever

saw. Why he was a great deal worse than----."

"Your husband. Speak it out, I am not ashamed to own it, now I have

reformed."

"You--you, not you; this is not Maggie."

"Yes, mother, this is 'Wild Maggie,' and this is her father. This nice

young lady, that said so sweetly, 'Come with us,' this is 'Wild Maggie,'

and this is--is--"

"Old Jim Reagan, the miserable old drunkard, that used to live in a

miserable cellar, in Centre street, and finally got turned out of that,

and this is Maggie, and this is our home."

And he looked around proudly upon the comforts of this home, and

contrasted them with the miseries of that.

Now Margaret--Mag or Maggie, no longer--began to "fly around." Breakfast

was to be got, and what was much more difficult, a full-sized woman, a

half-grown girl, and a quarter-grown boy, were to be clothed. How was it

to be done? One of her dresses, "with a tuck,"--tucks are fashionable in

these days--was soon made to fit Sally. The father said, he would go out

and get some clothes for Mrs. Eaton and little Willie, for, thank God,

he was able to do it, for what he saved by soberness, not only enabled

him to live and clothe himself, but to fulfil that best of all Christian

injunctions, to be kind to the widows and fatherless, and he did not

know of any that he was under more obligations to than the wife and

children of Bill Eaton, and, God willing, he was going to clothe them,

and then he was going to go with them to Mr. Pease, the man that had

been the means of reclaiming him, and get them a home in the House of

Industry, until they could find some other one, or a way to earn a

living.

Apparently it was not willed that he should spend his scanty store to

clothe the naked at this time; the will to do so was equally acceptable

to the great Will, as though the deed were done, for just now there was

a rap at the door, indicating an early visitor. Who could it be?

Margaret ran down to see. A boy from a second-hand clothing store,

entered with a large bundle.

"I wants to know as how if the woman that was burnt out is here?"

"Yes."

"And a little boy and gal?"

"Yes."

"This is the place then. Are you the gal what was at the fire and said,

'come with us?'"

"Yes, why do you ask that?"

"'Cause the gentleman told me to ask, and when I was sure I was right,

to give the gal these three gold pieces, one for each word, and the

bundle of clothes and the letter to the woman. That's all. So here they

are. I am sure I is right for you don't look as though you could tell a

lie if you tried. Why what ails the gal? I'll be blamed if I see

anything to cry about. Why, hang me, what does it mean? I feel just so I

should cry too if I stayed in this house long. So good bye. I am sure it

is all right?"

And the door closed behind him, and he was gone. What could it mean? Was

she dreaming? No! There lay the bundle, there glistened the half eagles

in her hand. It could not be a dream, yet it was a mystery. How could

any one know so soon that her roof contained one so needy? Who had heard

those words, those three little words, every one of which had turned to

gold? Yes, and will yet turn to fruit more precious.

How she wished she had asked the boy who it was, who had been so

suddenly raised up, so mysteriously sent to visit the widow in her

affliction. Perhaps the letter would tell. So she took it and the bundle

up stairs and opened both. One contained full suits for the mother,

daughter, and little boy, all black--the other was a letter to Mr.

Pease.

"Can this be the work of man?" said Mrs. Eaton; "who knew, who could

know, that I must wear the widow's weeds, so soon?"

"There is a spirit of intelligence which maketh known secret things. How

could any one without such spiritual aid know that you was a widow, that

you was destitute, that we had bid you come with us, that I was just

going out to buy clothes, and here they come like manna in the

wilderness to Israel's host. Who will deny spiritual influence and

special interposition now?"

Who will believe it, when they are told how all this seeming mystery

will melt away with the shades of the night which brought it into the

minds of these simple people?

"But what is in the letter, my child, does that tell anything?"

"Nothing, father; it is addressed to the Rev. Mr. Pease, at the Five

Points House of Industry, requesting him to give a home to a poor woman

and two children, and says the writer will see him about it soon."

"Ah, that is just where I intended to take them, after the funeral."

"Yes, and see how nicely these clothes fit them, just as well as though

made on purpose. How could anybody guess so well?"

"It is no guess work. There is something more than guess work about

this."

So there was.

"Breakfast is ready, father."

"Then let us eat it in thankfulness and then."

And then!

CHAPTER II.[A]

LITTLE KATY.--A MIDNIGHT INTERVIEW.

What is said in this, will apply to everything similar.

"Here's your nice Hot Corn, smoking hot, smoking hot, just from the

pot!" Hour after hour one evening, as I sat over the desk, this cry came

up in a soft, plaintive voice, under my window, which told me of one of

the ways of the poor to eke out means of subsistence in this

over-burdened, ill-fed, and worse-lodged home of misery--of so many

without means, who are constantly crowding into the dirtiest purlieus of

this notoriously dirty city, where they are exposed to the daily chance

of death from some sudden outbreaking epidemic like that now desolating

the same kind of streets in New Orleans, and swallowing up its

thousands of victims from the same class of poverty-stricken,

uncomfortably-provided for human beings, who know not how, or have not

the power, to flee to the healthy hills and green fields of the country.

Here they live--barely live--in holes almost as hot as the hot corn, the

cry of which rung in my ears from dark till midnight.

[A] This chapter was published under the simple title of "Hot Corn,"

among the "City Items" of the New York Daily Tribune, August 5, 1853. It

is but slightly altered from the original text.

[Illustration: "HOT CORN! HERE'S YOUR NICE HOT CORN!"--_Page 45._]

"Hot corn! hot corn! here's your nice hot corn," rose up in a faint,

child like voice, which seemed to have been aroused by the sound of my

step as I was about entering the Park, while the city clock told the

hour when ghosts go forth upon their midnight rambles. I started, as

though a spirit had given me a rap, for the sound seemed to come out of

one of the iron posts which stand as sentinels over the main entrance,

forbidding all vehicles to enter, unless the driver takes the trouble to

pull up and tumble out of the way one of the aforesaid posts, which is

not often done, because one of them, often, if not always, is out of its

place, giving free ingress to the court-yard, or livery stable grounds

of the City Hall, which, in consideration of the growth of a few

miserable dusty brown trees and doubtful colored grass-patches, we call

"the Park."

Looking over the post I discovered the owner of the hot corn cry, in the

person of an emaciated little girl about twelve years old, whose dirty

shawl was nearly the color of the rusty iron, and whose face, hands, and

feet, naturally white and delicate, were grimmed with dirt until nearly

of the same color. There were two white streaks running down from the

soft blue eyes, that told of the hot scalding tears that were coursing

their way over that naturally beautiful face.

"Some corn, sir," lisped the little sufferer, as she saw I had stopped

to look at her, hardly daring to speak to one who did not address her in

rough tones of command, such as "give me some corn, you little wolf's

whelp," or a name still more opprobrious both to herself and mother.

Seeing I had no look of contempt for her, she said, piteously, "please

buy some corn, sir."

"No, my dear, I do not wish any; it is not very healthy in such warm

weather as this, and especially so late at night."

"Oh dear, then, what shall I do?"

"Why, go home. It is past midnight, and such little girls as you ought

not to be in the streets of this bad city at this time of night."

"I can't go home--and I am so tired and sleepy. Oh dear!"

"Cannot go home. Why not?"

"Oh, sir, my mother will whip me if I go home without selling all my

corn. Oh, sir, do buy one ear, and then I shall have only two left, and

I am sure she might let little Sis and me eat them, for I have not had

anything to eat since morning, only one apple the man gave me, and part

of one he threw away. I could have stole a turnip at the grocery when I

went to get--to get something in the pitcher for mother, but I dared

not. I did use to steal, but Mr. Pease says it is naughty to steal, and

I don't want to be naughty, indeed I don't; and I don't want to be a bad

girl, like Lizzy Smith, and she is only two years older than me, if she

does dress fine; 'cause Mr. Pease says she will be just like old drunken

Kate, one of these days. Oh dear! now there goes a man, and I did not

cry hot corn, what shall I do?"

"Do! There, that is what you shall do," as I dashed the corn in the

gutter. "Go home; tell your mother you have sold it all, and here is the

money."

"Wont that be a lie, sir? Mr. Pease says we must not tell lies."

"No, my dear, that wont be a lie, because I have bought it and thrown it

away, instead of eating it."

"But, sir, may I eat it then, if you don't want it?"

"No, it is not good for you; good bread is better, and here is a

sixpence to buy a loaf, and here is another to buy some nice cakes for

you. Now that is your money; don't give it to your mother, and don't

stay out so late again. Go home earlier and tell your mother you cannot

sell all your corn and you cannot keep awake, and if she is a good

mother she won't whip you."

"Oh, sir, she is a good mother sometimes. But I am sure the grocery man

at the corner is not a good man, or he would not sell my mother rum,

when he knows--for Mr. Pease told him so--that we poor children are

starving. Oh, I wish all the men were good men like him, and then my

mother would not drink that nasty liquor, and beat and starve us, 'cause

there would be nobody to sell her any--and then we should have plenty to

eat."

Away she ran down the street towards that reeking centre of filth,

poverty and misery, the noted Five Points of New, York.

As I plodded up Broadway, looking in here and there upon the palatial

splendors of metropolitan "saloons"--I think that is the word for

fashionable upper class grog-shops--I almost involuntarily cried, "hot

corn," as I saw the hot spirit of that grain, under the various guises

of "pure gin"--"old rum"--"pale brandy"--"pure port"--"Heidsick"--or

"Lager-bier"--poured down the throats of men--and ah! yes, of women,

too, whose daughters may some day sit, at midnight, upon the cold

curbstone, crying "Hot corn," to gain a penny for the purchase of a

drink of the fiery dragon they are now inviting to a home in their

bosoms, whose cry in after years will be, "Give, give, give," and still

as unsatisfied as the horse-leech's daughters.

Again, as I passed on up that street, still busy and thronged at

midnight, as a country village at mid-day intermission of church

service, ever and anon, from some side-street, came up the cry of "Hot

corn--hot corn!" and ever as I heard it, and ever as I shall, through

all years to come, I thought of that little girl and her drunken mother,

and the "bad man" at the corner grocery, and that her's was the best,

the strongest Maine Law argument which had ever fallen upon my listening

ear.

Again, as I turned the corner of Spring street, the glare and splendor

of a thousand gas lights, and the glittering cut glass of that, for the

first time lighted-up, bar-room of the Prescott House--so lauded by the

press for its magnificence--dashes our eyes and blinds our senses, till

we are almost ready to agree, that first class hotels must have such

Five Point denizen-making appurtenances, as this glittering room,

shamelessly, invitingly open to the street; when that watch-word cry,

like the pibroch's startling peal, came up from the near vicinity,

wailing like a lost spirit on the midnight air--"Hot corn, hot

corn!--here's your nice hot corn--smoking hot--hot--hot corn."

"Yes, yes!" I hear you cry--"it is a watchword--a glorious watchword,

that bids us do or die--until the smoking hot, fiery furnace-like gates

of hell, like this one now yawning before us, shall cease to be licensed

by a Christian people, or send delicate little girls at midnight through

the streets, crying 'Hot corn,' to support a drunken mother, whose first

glass was taken in a 'fashionable saloon,' or first-class liquor-selling

hotel."

"Hot corn," then, be the watchword of all who would rather see the grain

fed to the drunkard's wife and children, than into the insatiable hot

maw of the whiskey still.

Let your resolutions grow hot and strong, every time you hear this

midnight city cry, that you will devote, if nothing more,

"Three grains of corn, mother,

Only three grains of corn,"

towards the salvation of the thousand equally pitiable objects as the

little girl whose wailing cry has been the inciting cause of this

present dish of "Hot Corn--smoking hot!"

CHAPTER III.

WILD MAGGIE.

"A woman sometimes scorns what best contents her."

It is human nature to scorn many things which would content us--which do

content us after we once taste them.

One of the reasons why the vicious scorn those who would make them

better; why they scorn to change their present wretched life, or

miserable habitations, is because they know not what would best content

them.

When that missionary first located his mission to the poorest of New

York city poor, the drunkards, thieves, and prostitutes of the Five

Points, he was scorned by those he came to save. He and his mission were

hated with all the bitter hate which the evil mind oft feels for the

good, made still more bitter by the sectarian venom of ignorant

Catholics towards the hated heretic Protestants. Every annoyance that

low cunning could invent was thrown in his way.

Feeling the inefficiency of the system so long and so uselessly

practiced, of giving Bibles or tracts to such people, to be sold or

pawned for a tenth part of their value, he began a new system. This was

to give employment to the idle, to teach all, who would learn, how to

work, how to earn their own living, and that industry would bring more

content than drunkenness and its concomitant vices. Though stolen fruit

may be sweet, the bread of toil is sweeter, and he would teach them how

to gain it.

One of the first efforts made was work for the needle; because that was

the most easily started, can be carried on with less capital, and, on

the other hand, produces the least capital--or rather poorest pay to

those who labor. Yet it is better than idleness, and he soon found

willing hands to work, after he opened his shop, and invited all who

would conform to the rules, and were willing to earn their bread, rather

than beg or steal it, to come and get work--such as coarse shirts and

pants--work that they could do, many of them with skill and great

rapidity, but such as they could not get trusted with at any common

establishment--the very name of the place where they lived being

sufficient to discredit them--so that security, which they could not

give, for the return of the garments, closed the door against their very

will to work.

Another discouraging thing against the very poor who did occasionally

get "slop shop work," arose from some gross, cruel, wicked, downright

robbery, perpetrated upon "sewing women" by some incarnate fiend in the

clothing trade. The difficulty to get work, the miserably poor pay

offered to those who

"Stitch, stitch, stitch,

Band and gusset and seam,

Seam and gusset and band,

With eyes and lamp both burning dim,

With none to lend a helping hand,"

is enough to sink stouter hearts than those which beat in misery's

bosom.

Sunk in misery, poverty, crime, filth, degradation, want; neglected by

all the world; hated by those who should love; trodden down by those who

should, if they did a Christian duty, lift up; living in habitations

such as--but no matter, you shall go with me, by and by, to see where

they live--how could they lift themselves up, how could they be

industrious and improve their condition, how could they accept bibles

and tracts, with any promise of good?

So thought the missionary; and so he set himself about giving them the

means to labor, with a hope and sure promise of reward.

Some of those who sent him there to preach salvation to the heathen of

the Five Points differed with him--differ still--thinking that a

Christian minister degrades himself when he goes into a "slop shop" to

give out needle-work to misery's household--or attempts to teach

industry to idle, vicious children, or reform degraded women, by

teaching them the ways of living without sin, without selling their

bodies to buy bread, or in their despair, to exchange the last loaf for

rum.

So he opened a shop--now enlarged into a "House of Industry"--and soon

found his reward. But he was annoyed, hated, persecuted, beaten--but God

and a good will conquered.

Among other petty, vexatious trifles--it is trifles that annoy--a little

girl, in rags and filth, with a mat of soft "bonny brown hair," no doubt

well colonized, bare-headed and bare-footed, in cold or heat, used to

come every day to the door, ringing her shrill musical voice through

the open way, through the crack or key-hole, if it was shut, calling him

all sorts of opprobrious names, mixed with all sorts of sentences of

Catholic hatred to Protestantism, that showed that she was herself a

missionary from adults of evil minds. Then she would call over the names

of the inmates, with all their catalogue of crimes, giving little scraps

of their history, and their hateful nick-names--singing some of the

songs they used to sing in their drunken debauches at Pete Williams's;

and such a voice as she had would have won her worshippers in high life,

and she had been with them and of them. And her features and blue eyes

were as beautiful as her voice was strong and sweet; and there she would

tell him, and the crowd of idlers who came to listen, and laugh, and

shout at her cunning tricks and evident annoyances, for what purpose he

wanted all them old ----'s; and so it went on, day after day. All

attempts to get rid of her were of no avail. Scolding, threatening, were

alike unheeded. "Catch me first," was her answer. Then he followed her

to her home, to expostulate with her parents. Vain effort!

Up Anthony street to Centre; come with me, reader, let us look at that

home!

There is a row of dens all along upon the east side of that street, full

of those whom hope has forsaken, and misery has in her household. Above

ground, below ground, in cellar or garret, back room or front, black and

white, see how they swarm at door and window, in hall and stairway, and

out upon the sidewalk, all day in idleness, all night in mischief,

crime, and sin.

Elbow your way along among the standing, and step over the prostrate

drunken or sleeping women and children along the side-walk. Stop

here--here is a sort of hole-in-the-ground entrance to a long, dark,

narrow alley, let us enter. "No, no, not there," you will exclaim.

"Surely human beings cannot live there?"

Yes, they do. That girl has just gone down there, and we will follow.

"Better not go there," says a young urchin in the crowd; "a man was

stabbed down there last night."

Encouraging; but we enter, and grope along about a hundred feet, and a

door opens on the right, the girl we have followed darts out, up like a

cat, over a high fence, on to a roof, up that, into a garret window,

with a wild laugh and ringing words, "You didn't do it this time, you

old Protestant thief, did you? You want to catch me, to send me to 'the

Island.' I know you, you old missionary villain you. I heard Father

Phelan tell what you want to do with the poor folks at the Points; you

want to turn them out of house and home, and build up your grand houses,

and make them all go to hear you preach your lies; you do, you old

heretic, but you didn't catch me. I'll plague you again to-morrow."

We entered her home--the home that the missionary was trying to turn her

out of. Can it be possible that human nature can cling to such a home,

and refuse to be turned out, or occupy a better one.

The room is one of a "row," along the narrow dark corridor we entered,

half sunken below the ground, with another just such another row

overhead, each ten or twelve feet square, with a door and one little

window upon this narrow alley which is the only yard; at the end of

which there is a contagion-breeding temple of Cloacina, common to all.

In "the house" that we enter, a man lies helplessly drunk upon a dirty

rug on the floor; a woman, too much overcome to rise, sits propped up in

one corner. There is altogether, perhaps, fifty cents worth of furniture

and clothing in the room.

And this is the loved home of one of the smartest, brightest, most

intelligent little girls in this God-forsaken neighborhood.

The missionary made known his errand and was told that he might do

anything he pleased with the girl, if he would catch her and tame her.

"For," said her mother, "what do we want with her at home--_at

home_!--She is never here, only to sleep."

Only to sleep! Where did she sleep? On the damp, bare floor, of course,

where else could she sleep in that home?

The next morning various devices were contrived to catch her, to force

her into a better home. All failed.

When did force ever succeed with one of her sex?

If the serpent had _bid_ our first mother to eat the apple, she would

have thrown it down the villain's throat, splitting his forked tongue in

its passage.

Finally it was arranged that a boy, noted as "a runner," should stand

behind the door, and when she came with her jibes, sometimes provoking

mirth, and sometimes ire, he should jump out and catch her.

"Catch me if you can!" and away went she, away went he, under this cart

and over that. Now he will have her--his hand is outstretched to seize

his chase--vain hope--she drops suddenly in his path, and he goes

headlong down a cellar. When he came up there was a great shout, and a

great many dirty bare-footed girls about, but that one was nowhere in

sight. So back he goes, enters the door; and a wild laugh follows him

close upon his heels.

"You didn't catch me this time, did you? Don't you want another race?

Ha, ha, ha."

And away she went, singing:

"Up, up, and away with the rising sun,

The chase is now before ye;

Up, up and away with hound and gun,

The chase is now before ye."

It was a chase that cunning must catch, strength could not win.

Everybody said she never could be caught and tamed. She had run wild all

her young years. She was not by nature vicious, but she was most

incorrigibly mischievous. She was, so everybody said, and he ought to

know, beyond the hope of redemption. Yet everybody was mistaken. Reader,

you already know this girl, for this is "Wild Maggie, of the Five

Points." This is the kind, sweet, tender-hearted Margaret, you have read

of in a former chapter, ministering to the wants of that poor widow and

destitute children, living in comfort, with neatness and industry, and

her father, in a happy home; and that father the poor, miserable,

wretched, besotted drunkard, whom we found in that wretched hole, in

that dark alley in Centre street.

What a change!

It was a change for good. It was a deed of mercy to redeem such a child

as this from a course of life that has but one phase--one worse than

useless object--one wretched termination.

What magic power had wrought this change?

Words of kindness, charity, hope, teachings of the happiness attendant

on virtue, religion, industry; by these the worst can be redeemed.

How?

"Finding every effort unavailing," said the missionary, "I changed my

tactics. I was busy one morning in the workshop, laying out work, when I

cast my eye towards the open door, and there saw Wild Maggie, waiting

for a word upon which she might retort. Without seeming to notice her, I

said, loud enough for her to hear, 'Oh, how I wish I had some one to

help me lay out this work.' There was a look of intelligence spreading

over her face, which seemed to say as plainly as looks could say, 'I

could do that.'

"'Will you?' I said; she started as though I was mentally replying to

her passing thoughts.

"She did not say, 'Yes,' but she thought it. I had touched a chord.

"'Maggie,' said I, with all the tone and looks of kindness I could

command, 'Maggie, my girl, come in; you can help me; I know you are

smart, come, I will give you sixpence if you will help me a little

while.' She stepped into the door, looked behind it suspiciously, and

started back. She remembered the trap. 'No, I won't. You want to catch

me and send me to the Island. I know you, you old Protestant. Old Kate

told me yesterday, that you had sent off Liz. Smith, Nance Hastings, and

hump-backed Lize, and a lot of girls.'

"'So I have, but not to the Island. They have all got good places where

they are contented and happy. But I don't send anybody away that don't

want to go. I won't send you away, nor won't keep you if you don't want

to stay.'

"'Will you let me come out again, if I come in, when I am a mind to?'

"'Yes, certainly, my dear child.'

"My dear child!" Where has she ever heard those words? In former days,

before her father and mother had sunk so low, as they now are, when she

used to go to school, to church, and sabbath-school, and wear clothes,

such as she was not ashamed of. Want of clothing will sink the highest

to the lowest state of rags, and dirt, and misery.

"'Will you swear, that you will let me come out, and you won't beat me.

Limping Bill and one-eyed Luce, his woman, says, you licked little Sappy

till she died.'

"'They are great liars.'

"'So they say you are. That you preach nothing but lies.'

"'Well, I won't lie to you, Maggie, and I won't whip you, but I won't

swear. Did you ever know any good man swear?'

"She thought a moment, and replied, 'Well, I don't know--I know them

that swear the most will lie. Will you let the door stand open? If you

will I will come in?'

"'Yes,' and in she came.

"'Now, what do you want I should do?'

"'There, do you look at me. I am laying out shirts for the women to sew.

That pile, there, that is the body; this, the sleeves; that, the collar;

these, the wristbands; these, the gussets; here are six buttons, and

here is the thread to make it, and then it will be a shirt when made.

Now we roll it up and tie a string around it; now it is ready to give

out. Now, you can do that just as well as I can, and you don't know how

much it will help me.'

"'Yes, I can, and I can beat you.'

So she could. She was just as quick at work as she was at play and

mischief, and the piles disappeared under her nimble fingers much more

rapidly than they did under his, and so he told her. Who had ever

praised her work before, though all had "her deviltry?"

The spirit of reformation had already commenced its glorious work.

"When that job was finished, she turned her sweet blue eyes upon me,

with an expression which said as plain as eyes can speak, 'I am sorry

that job is done. I like that, can't you give me another?'

"There was no other which she could do just then, but she said, 'What

shall I do now?'"

"Well, Maggie, I have no more work for you to-day, but here is your

sixpence, I promised you, and here are some cakes; come again to-morrow,

you can help me every day. I like your help."

She did not want to go. She had tasted of a fruit which had opened her

eyes, and she would fain clothe herself in fig leaves, so they hid the

deformity of dirt, and rags, and sin. Wild as the fawn, as easily as the

fawn subdued. At the approach of man, that timid animal bounds into the

thickest brake and hides away; but once in the hands of man, it turns

and follows him to his home, licking his hand as though it were with its

own dam. So was Wild Maggie tamed.

"What shall I do now?"

What should she do? A score of little girls were huddling around the

door, for the news was out that Maggie, Wild Maggie, had been caught and

caged, and they wanted to see "what would come of it."

"A thought struck me," said the missionary. "I asked her if she could

read. Yes, and write. Had she been to school? Yes. Then you shall play

school. You shall have these benches, and you shall call in those

children, and you shall be the teacher, and so you may play school."

Was there ever a happier thought engendered. Maggie was delighted, the

children came rushing in, ready for "a play never before enacted in this

theatre."

For an hour or more she plied her task diligently, and it was

astonishing with what effect. How she reduced her unruly materials to

order. How she made them say, yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am, to their school

mistress. How she made them sit and "look like somebody." Taught this

one his A B Cs, and that one to spell B-a-k-e-r. How she told this one

to wash his face, next time he came to school, and that one if she had

any better clothes, to wear them. Poor Maggie, she never thought of the

poverty of her own.

"Now," said she, "every one of you sit still; not a word of noise, and

no running out while I am gone, or I shall punish you worse than

shutting you up in a dark closet. Mr. Pease, will you look to my school

a moment?"

Away she bounded. Oh, what a step! Step! it was more like flying. A

moment, hardly time for a few pleasant words to her school, and she

bounds in again, with a little paper parcel in her hand. What could it

mean? It means that,

Many a flower in wilds unseen,

The sweetest fragrance grows;

From many a deep and hidden spring,

The coolest water flows.

She first inquires, "have they all been good?" "Yes, all." Then she

unwraps her parcel. How they look and wonder, "what is it?"

What is it? Simply this.

She has been out and spent her sixpence to do unto others just as she

had been done unto. Did ever cakes taste sweeter? Did ever benevolence

better enjoy herself than Maggie did, while thus distributing her

rewards? What a lesson of self-sacrifice! The first sixpence--the whole

treasure of this world's goods, spent to promote the happiness of

others. This was a hint. It were a dull intellect that could not improve

it. The children were further fed, and bid to come again to-morrow. "And

this," said he, "was the beginning of our ragged beggar children school,

that has proved such a blessing to this neighborhood.

"Maggie," said I, taking her by the hand and looking her in the eye.

"Maggie, you have helped me a great deal to-day, will you come again

to-morrow?"

The string was touched, and tears flowed. When had tears, except tears

of anger, filled those eyes before? What had touched that string? Kind

words!

"If you will let me stay, I wont go away. I can learn to sew. I can make

these shirts."

"Yes, yes; and if you are here, these children will come, and we will

have school every day."

And so Wild Maggie was Wild Maggie no more. She was tamed. Her life had

taken on a new phase. To the questions, what would her father say? what

would her mother say? she replied, "What do they care? what have they

ever cared? Though they were not always so bad as they now are."

No, they were not always so bad as they now are. None of his class were

always so bad as they now are. Once her father was James Reagan, a

respectable man, a good carpenter, and had a good home. Now where was

he. Sunk, step by step, from hotel to saloon, from saloon to bar-room,

from bar-room to corner grocery, from grocery to cellar rum hole, from a

good house to a filthy, underground den in Centre street. He has but one

more step to take--one more underground hole to occupy.

But such as he may reform. He did. You have seen that. Will you ask,

how? You shall know.

Maggie became one of the household. She was washed, and fed, and

clothed; and how she worked, and learnt everything, and how she listened

at the temperance meetings to what "the pledge" had done, and how she

wished her mother would come and try--try to leave off drinking, and

become "the good mother she was when I was a little girl." For her

father she had no hope. For her mother, she determined to persevere.

When she was sober she would talk, and cry, and promise, but the demon

rum would overcome her, and then she would curse her daughter, and call

her all the vile names that the insane devil in her could invent.

And so it went on; Maggie still determined, still trying. The right time

came at last. One night, Maggie was not at the meeting. By and by, there

was a little stir at the door. What is the matter? A little girl is

pulling a woman, almost by force, into the room. It is Maggie and her

mother. She has got her old ragged dress off, and looks quite neat in

one that Maggie has made for her. But she hides her face. She is ashamed

to look those in the face she would have once looked down upon. A woman

is speaking--women can speak upon temperance--just such a woman as

herself--is it not herself--is she awake, or does she sleep and dream?

If awake, she hears her own story. The story of a woman with a drunken

husband. And she traces his fall from affluence down to beggary; then

her fall, down, down, down, to a cellar in Farlow's Court; there her

husband dies; there upon a pile of straw and rags upon the floor, in

drunken unconsciousness, she gives birth to a child--a living child by

the side of its dead father.

"What a night--what a scene, but you have not seen the worst of it. The

very heavens, as though angry at such awful use of the gifts of reason,

and the abuse of appetite, sent their forked messengers of fire to the

earth--less dangerous than the fire that man bottles up for his own

damnation; and the water came down in torrents, pouring into that cave

where the dead, and living, and new born were lying together, and

overflowed the floor, and when I felt its chill," said she, "I awaked

out of my drunken sleep, and felt around me, to see, no, I could not

see, all was pitch darkness. My child cried, and then--then a whole army

of rats, driven in by the rain, driven by the water from the floor, came

creeping on to me. Oh! how their slimy bodies felt as they crept over my

face. Then I tried to awaken my husband, but he would not wake, and in

my frenzy I struck and bit him--bit a dead man--for his was the sleep of

eternity. Then I summoned almost superhuman strength, and creeped up the

stairs and out into the court. I looked up; the storm was gone; there

was a smile in heaven--it was the smile of that murdered babe; for when

I had begged a light, and went back again to that dreadful, dreadful

habitation--why are human beings permitted to live in such awful

holes--has nobody any care for human life--what did I see? Mothers,

mothers--mothers that sleep on soft couches--hear me, hear me--hear of

the bitter fruits the rum trade bears--the rats had devoured the life

blood of that child. What next I know not. I know that I have never

drank since--never will again--by signing this pledge I was saved--all

may be saved."

"All? all? Can I--can I be restored as you have been--can I shake off

this demon that has dragged me down so low that my own mother would not

know me; or knowing, would spurn me? Can I be saved?"

It was Maggie's mother.

"Yes, you, you, I was a thousand times worse. Look at me now."

"Yes, mother, you. Come." And she took her by the hand and led her up to

the table, put a pen in her hand--dropt upon her knees--looked up to her

mother imploringly--up to heaven prayerfully--her lips quivered--the

tears rolled down her cheeks--"Now, mother, now."

'Tis done. She wrote her name in a fair hand--Mary Reagan--'Tis done.

'Tis done!--'tis done!--wild Maggie cries;

'Tis done!--'tis done!--the mother sighs;

'Tis done!--'tis done!--in chorus join,

To bear aloft the news along.

'Tis done!--'tis done! a voice replies,

Stand forth, be strong, and you shall rise.

And so she did. She never fell. She came to live in the house with

Maggie. "I cannot go back," she said, "to live with your father, if I

would stand fast; and I cannot think, after hearing that woman's story,

last night, of ever drinking again. I know that woman; I knew her when

she was a girl, one of the proudest and prettiest. My husband has spent

many a dollar with hers in the bar-room. Oh yes, I knew her well. I did

not know her last night; but when she told me who she was--that she was

Elsie Wendall--then I knew her. Oh! I could tell you such a story--but

not now. No! no, I cannot live with your father again, for I never will

drink any more--never--never!"

"But what, if father will take the pledge?"

"Oh! then I should be a happy woman again. But there is no hope."

"Yes, there is hope. I shall watch him; and, mother, I _will_ save him."

It was a great promise--a great undertaking for a young girl to promise

with an "I will." When did "I will" in woman's mouth ever fail?

That will was the strength of her life. It was for that she now lived

and labored. Now she had hope--now 'twas lost--now revived again. Now he

worked a month--sober for a whole month--then down he went if he

happened to go into one of his old haunts, or meet with some of his old

companions, who said, "come, Jim, let's take one drink--only one--one

won't do any hurt"--but two follow the one. Then Maggie would look him

up, get him sober again, and get him to work.

God bless that child! God did bless her, for she stuck to him, until he

finally consented to come once, just once to the temperance meeting--but

he would not sign the pledge--he never would sign away his

liberties--no--he was a free man. Well only come, come and listen--come

and see mother. That touched him. He loved mother--Yes he would come.

The evening came. Maggie watched every shadow that darkened the door.

Finally the last one seemed to have entered, but Jim Reagan was not

among them. Maggie could not give it up. She slipped out into the

street, it was well she did. She was just in time. A knot of men were

talking together, of the tyranny of temperance men, wanting to make

slaves of the people, getting them to sign away their rights--rights

their fathers fought and bled for.

Yes, and so had they--at the nose.

They had just carried the point, and started to follow Cale Jones over

to his grocery, who was going to stand treat all round. One lingered a

moment--looked back--as though he had promised to go that way--but

appetite was too strong for conscience, and he turned towards the

rum-hole. Just then a gentle hand is laid upon his arm, and a sweet

voice says:

"Father, come with me, come and see mother--don't go with those men."

Woman conquered.

When Cale Jones counted noses, to see which he should charge with the

treat he had promised "to stand," he found Jim Reagan was not in the

crowd.

"Why, damn the fellow, he has given us the slip after all our trouble.

I thought we had made a sure thing of it. I tell you what it is, boys,

we must manage somehow to stop this business, or trade is ruined. If

people are not to be allowed to drink anything but water, there'll be

many an honest man out of business. Times is hard enough now, what'll

they be then?"

Just then Tom Nolan, the mason--it used to be Drunken Tom Nolan--was

telling what they would be, at the temperance meeting.

It was a propitious time for Maggie. She led her father in, he hung back

a little, and tried to get into a dark corner near the door. That she

would not allow; some of Satan's imps might drag him away from the very

threshold of salvation. She led him along, he was sober now, and looked

sad, perhaps, ashamed.

"James, you here? Oh!"

It was his wife. He knew her voice, it was that of other days. He stared

at her; could it be her, so neat, and clean, and well dressed, and

speaking so fondly to him--to him--for she had refused to see him ever

since she took the pledge. Now, she came forward, took him by the hand,

ragged and dirty as he was--she knew what would clean him--led him to a

seat and sat down by his side. Maggie sat on the other. For a minute the

speaker could not go on. There was a choking in his throat, strong man

as he was, and there were many tears in the eyes that looked upon that

father, mother, and daughter, that night.

"Jim Reagan," said the speaker, "I am glad to see you here. You are an

old acquaintance of mine."

Jim Reagan looked at him with astonishment. Could that well dressed

laboring man, clean shaved and clean shirted, be Tom Nolan?

"I don't wonder that you look inquiringly at me, as much as to say, 'is

that you?' Yes, it is me, Tom Nolan, the mason, me who used to lay

around the dirty rum holes with you, begging, lying, stealing, to get a

drink. Do you think that now I would pick up old cigar stumps and quids

of tobacco, to fill my pipe? Do you think I would wear a hat, as I have

done, that my poor beggared boy picked out of the street? Look at that.

Does that look like the old battered thing I used to wear? Do these

clothes look like the dirty rags I wore when you and I slept in Cale

Jones's coal-box? Do I look like the drunken Tom Nolan that kept a

family of starving beggars, with two other families, in one room, ten by

twelve feet square; and that a garret room, without fireplace, without

glass in its one window; with the roof so low that I could only stand up

straight in one corner; and that mean room in the vilest locality on

earth, in a house--ah! whole row of houses, tenanted by just such

miserable, rum-beggared human beings--buildings owned by a human

monster--houses for the poor which are enough to sicken the vilest of

beasts; such as no good man would let for tenements, even when he could

get tenants as degraded as I was--tenements that any Christian grand

jury would indict, and any court, which desired to protect the lives of

the people, would compel the owners to pull down, as the worst, with

one exception, of all city nuisances.

"How did I live there? How did my wife and children ever live there, in

that little miserable room, with seven others, just such wretches as

ourselves? How do hundreds of such men, women, and children as we were,

still live there? I was in that same room--the place my children used to

call _home_--this evening. The entrance is in Cow Bay. If you would like

to see it, saturate your handkerchief with camphor, so that you can

endure the horrid stench, and enter. Grope your way through the long,

dark, narrow passage--turn to your right, up the dark and dangerous

stairway; be careful where you place your foot around the lower step, or

in the corners of the broad stairs, for it is more than shoe-mouth deep

of steaming filth. Be careful too, or you may meet some one--perhaps a

man, perhaps a woman--as nature divides the sexes; as the rum seller

combines them, both beasts, who in their drunken frenzy may thrust you,

for the very hatred of your better clothes, or the fear that you have

come to rescue them from their crazy loved dens of death, down, headlong

down, those filthy stairs. Up, up, winding up, five stories high, now

you are under the black smoky roof; turn to the left--take care and not

upset that seething pot of butcher's offal soup, that is cooking upon a

little furnace at the head of the stairs--open that door--go in, if you

can get in. Look; here is a negro and his wife sitting upon the

floor--where else could they sit, for there is no chair--eating their

supper off of the bottom of a pail. A broken brown earthen jug holds

water--perhaps not all water. Another negro and his wife occupy another

corner; a third sits in the window monopolising all the air astir. In

another corner, what do we see?

"A negro man, and a stout, hearty, rather good looking, young white

woman."

"Not sleeping together?"

"No, not exactly that--there is no bed in the room--no chair--no

table--no nothing--but rags, and dirt, and vermin, and degraded, rum

degraded, human beings--men and women with just such souls as animate

the highest and proudest in the land."

"Who is this man?"

"Dat am Ring-nosed Bill."

"Is that his wife?"

"Well, I don't know that. He calls her his woman."

"And she lives with him as his wife--you all live here together in this

room?"

"Well, we is got nowhere else to live. Poor folks can't lib as rich ones

do--hab to pay rent--pretty hard to do that alone."

"How much rent for this room?"

"Seventy-five cents a week, ebry time in advance."

"Who is this man?"

"They calls me Snaky Jo. 'Spose may be my name is Jo Snaky. Don't know

rightly."

"What do you do for a living?"

"Well, mighty hard to tell dat, dat am fact, massa. Picks up a job now

and then. Mighty hard times though--give poor man a lift, massa."

"Is that man and woman drunk."

"Well, 'spose am, little tossicated."

"A little intoxicated! They are dead drunk, lying perfectly unconscious,

in each other's _emesis_, upon the bare floor. The atmosphere of this

room is enough to breed contagion, and sicken the whole neighborhood,

and would, but that the whole neighborhood is equally bad. Let us hasten

down to the open air of the court--it is but little better--all

pollution--all that breathe it, polluted. Yet, in that gate of death I

once lived. Look at me, James, you knew me then. Look at me now, you

don't know me. You knew me a beast--you may know me a man--you may know

yourself one. Sign this paper--there is a power of magic in it--and you

shall go home with me, and see where I live now, and I will clothe you

and help to sustain you in your sober life, just as Thomas Elting did

me, and with heaven's blessing, we will make a man of you."

"Too late! too late! not enough of the old frame left to rebuild."

"It is never too late. Look at the piles of old brick, and tiles, and

boards, and joist, and rafters, and doors, and glass, of the pulled down

houses. Are they wasted? I am a mason, you a carpenter; if we cannot put

them back and build up the same old-fashioned edifice, we can make a

good, snug, comfortable house. Come, sign the contract, and let us set

right about the job."

"Father, come, father!"

He turned and spoke a few low words to his wife, to which she replied:

"Yes, I will. Keep the pledge one month and I will go and live with you,

die with you."

"Then try it, father, come." And she led him forward, just as she had

done her mother. You have seen, shall see, how heaven blessed her for

filial piety.

"I used to write. 'Tis a long time since I did. Maggie, my hand

trembles. Help me--guide the pen. I cannot see clearly."

No wonder. There was a tear in each eye. There were other tears when

Maggie took him again by the hand, and again said:

"Come, father, let us pray;" and then all kneeled down together, and

then Mr. Nolan took him by the arm, and said, "Come, James, let us go

home."

Not yet. He had one more act to perform. He shook his wife's hand, and

said, "Good bye. I shall keep it." Then he looked wishfully at Maggie,

as though he wanted something, yet dare not ask it, for fear he should

be repulsed. Still the yearning of nature was upon him. It was a long

time since he had felt it as he now felt, but he was beginning to be a

new man. Maggie was his only child, his once loved, much caressed child.

Would she ever cling those arms around his neck again. She had shown

herself this night one of the blessed of this earth. She had done, or

induced him to do, what no other soul on earth could have done, and how

his heart did yearn to clasp her in his arms. He stopped half way to the

door, and looked upon her with tearful, loving, thankful eyes. It needs

no wires, no magnet, no human contrivance, to convey the magnetism of

the heart. She felt its power, as it sprung from the lightning flash of

loving eyes, and quick as that flash, she made one bound, one word,

"Father!" and her arms were around his neck, her lips to his, and here

let us shift the scene.

CHAPTER IV.

THE TEMPTATION.--THE FALL.

Eve was tempted of Satan, and fell.

So have been her children.

About two months after the events of the last chapter, a few of the new

friends of James Reagan joined together, procured a comfortable room in

Mulberry street, and put in the necessary articles of furniture, and his

wife, faithful to her promise, came to live with him. There was a great

contrast between this and the home where we visited him in Centre

street. Nolan and Elting stuck to him, and he stuck to the pledge.

Margaret watched him, visited him, went with him and her mother to

church and temperance meetings, and, finally, became satisfied and happy

that her father had made a complete reformation, and that he had

outlived all danger of relapse; so she accepted a good offer to go into

the country, and live in a farmer's house, where she would learn

house-work. It was her fortune, but his misfortune, thus to be

separated. She was his ever-watchful guardian angel. His wife was

affectionately kind, and they lived together, as of old, happily. And

so, as of Adam and Eve in paradise, they might have lived, if there had

been no serpents in New York. They beset him--waylaid him--tempted

him--but no art could induce him to enter their sulphurous dens. Cale

Jones swore that he would get him back; that he would have him among

his old cronies again, or die in the attempt.

"Them ere cold water chaps aren't a going to crow over me that ere way,

no how. I tell you what it is, boys, you must contrive some way to get

Jim in here some night; he has got money now, and if he won't drink

himself, he shall stand treat any how. We've treated him many a time."

"Dat am de fac," says Ring-nosed Bill.

"Shut your clapper, you drunken nigger, you; who axt you to put in your

oar. If you want to do anything, just get Jim Reagan, by hook or crook,

in here once more."

"And you will give him what you did Pedlar Jake."

"Shut pan, or I'll chuck your ivory into your bread-basket. What's in

your wool, Snakey?"

"Dis nigger knows how to fix him. Make him come his self."

"Let her rip, Snakey; how'll you do it?"

"Jis go to work at right end foremost. 'Spose you the debble stick him

forked tongue right out all at once to frighten Fader Adam? No, sir-ee;

he creep round mighty sly, and wiggle him tail at Mudder Eve, and den

she come it over de old man. Dat am the way. Aren't you got no

gumption?"

"I understand. Who shall the Eve be, Snakey?"

"Smoky Sal. She is a pet of his. He got her in."

"I know it. She is in that old missionary's claws. How are you going to

get her out?"

"Dat easy 'nuff, so you work him right. Gib us a drink, Cale. I isn't

going to grab for you for nothing."

"I'll give you a gallon if you bring him in. How'll you do it?'

"Do you think this nigger am a fool, sure? 'Spose I gwine to tell you,

and lose the gallon. Take notice, Ring-nose, it's a fair trade. So jis

you git ready to-morrow night for business, case he'll be down then."

The next night the trap was set. Snakey went to One-eyed Angeline, and

promised her a share in the gallon, if she would contrive a plan to get

Smoky Sal out of the House of Industry, and get her over to Cale

Jones's, and get her drunk.

These two had long been sisters in sin. One had reformed, or was trying

to reform, for Reagan had got her into the House, and seemed very

anxious for her, having, as he said, been the cause of her downfall. The

other hated her for her reformation, and would drag her back, down,

down, to the wretched life she had escaped from.

So she sent word to Sally that she was sick and almost dying, and begged

her to come and see her. How could she refuse? So she went, and found

her with her head tied up, and in dreadful pain. Directly in came Snakey

Jo, with the first installment of the gallon. It was to bathe her head.

Can an old inebriate put liquor upon the outside of the head without

putting it in? Sally could not. She smelt--she tasted--she drank--was

drunk--and then Angeline took her down to Cale Jones's grocery, and into

his back room, and then that black imp of a worse than slave's master,

watched for Reagan as he started for home, and with an air of honesty

that might deceive the wariest old fox into a trap, he told him how

"Angeline had coaxed Sally into the grocery, and he had been watching an

hour"--that was the only truth he spoke--he watched for another

victim--"and she hadn't come out yet, and he was afraid she was in

trouble; and now, Mister Reagan, I is so glad I is fell in wid you,

accidental like, case I didn't know as you was in the Points, case you

can get her out, and get her back home."

With a natural impulse to do good, he determined, imprudently, to be

sure, to do what he had not done since he signed the pledge--to enter a

rum-hole. There he found the two women as the negro had told him. Sally

was completely overcome, and lying in one corner of "the back room."

Back it was, quite out of sight or hearing of the street, where many a

victim had been robbed at a game of cards, or by more direct means. It

was in this room that Pedlar Jake got his quietus.

"I had been in the room often before," said Reagan. "I knew the way, and

I paid no heed to the hypocritically angry words I was greeted with as I

entered, and told to clear out and mind my own business. I pushed my way

through the crowd of loafers, and entered the door of death. That old

witch, Angeline, took care to get out of my way as I went in. I sat down

upon the bed and tried to rouse up the victim of this infernal plot,

little thinking that I was the greatest one of the two. The room was

very close and foul, and as I had been unused, lately, to breathe such

air, it made me sick. 'Tom,' said I--let me stop and moralize a little

upon this name. I would never call a child, Tom. There is something

fatal in the word. I have known more drunken Toms than of all other

names. It is a low-bred name. Bill, Jim, Joe, Sam, Ike, are all bad, but

none equal to Tom." "Two of my drunkenest companions," said Reagan,

"afterwards, my best friends, were Toms--now Thomas Elting and Thomas

Nolan." Parents, don't nickname your children, it is a step down that

may carry them to the bottom of the ladder.

Give your children good names; names they will not be ashamed of in

after life, and never cut them short. Never call, William, Bill; or,

Catherine, Kate; or, Mary, that most beautiful of all names, a name I

love, Moll; it will, perhaps, be the direct cause of their ruin as they

grow up. Who would think of speaking a foul word to Miss Mary Dudley?

Who would speak with respect to Moll Dud? Parents, think of it.

Now, here was another Tom. A bright, active boy--Tom Top, whose proper

name was, Thomas Topham. What if he had been called Charles? why, his

nickname would have been an elongation to Charley, a name that everybody

loves. At any rate, he would not have been, drunken Tom--a poor,

neglected orphan boy, who, for want of some one to guide and keep him in

the path of virtue, had strayed into the very worst of all paths of

vice. From a home, where he received a fair education, and had a good

mother, but a father who learned him to drink, and who thought it

cunning to call him, Tom Top, he was come down to be a mere hanger-on

around Cale Jones's grocery.

"God never works without an object," is an axiom of those who look

every day to him for counsel. We shall see in time how the villain was

defeated in his object of bringing Reagan into this place, and making

use of Tom for an instrument of his ruin.

"'Tom,' said I, 'bring me a glass of water.' He did so, I tasted it and

set it down a moment for the ice to melt. When I took it up again, I

swallowed the whole tumbler full at a gulph. In a moment my throat, my

stomach, my brain were on fire. I had drank half-a-pint of white

whiskey. Those wicked wretches had hired Tom to substitute one glass for

the other. What transpired for three days after, I know not."

The next morning, before sunrise, his wife came down to the Points in an

agony of fear. "Was Reagan there?" was her hopeful inquiry. Hope sunk

and almost carried her with it when told that he left there before ten

to go home. "Then he is lost, lost, lost!"

All that day he was searched for up and down, high and low, but nobody

had seen him. How the villains lied, for they were all the time gloating

over their victory--double victory--two stray sheep won back--back to

the wolf's den. All that day the pack were carousing upon the money

robbed from Reagan.

"What a glorious haul, boys," says Cale Jones, "we must have Tom Elting

and Nolan, next, and then hurrah, boys, we'll break up old Pease and

drive him out of the Points yet."

How could human nature become so infernally depraved, as to rejoice over

and glorify such deeds of darkness?

By Rum. The very parent of total depravity.

At night, after their day's work, Elting and Nolan came down and joined

the search, looking into every hole that was most likely to have been

used for his tomb, worse than tomb, for it was the burial-place of his

soul. They did not look in Cale Jones's back room, for he "took his

Bible oath that Jim Reagan had never entered his door in a three month."

Finally, after the pack had spent every cent of his money, and pawned

every article of his clothing, they were ready to get rid of his

company. But they were not quite satisfied with the misery they had made

for his wife, and so they plotted a scheme so wicked that the most

incarnate one of all the hosts of the infernal regions would blush to

own the deed.

They knew that Sally had been a source of disturbance, a cause of

jealousy to his wife in by-gone years, and so they laid their plan.

Madalina, a little beggar girl, an Italian rag-picker's daughter, was

promised a sixpence to go, as she would not be suspected, to tell Mrs.

Reagan, that Tom knew where her husband was.

It was a faint hope, but drowning men catch at straws.

Tom was hunted up. He was easily found, for he had his instructions, "to

bring the old woman along." Did they hope in her frenzy of despair and

jealousy that she too would fall? Yes they did.

Could human ingenuity contrive anything more harrowing to the mind of a

wife, searching for her absent husband, than an introduction into a room

where he was in bed with another woman, folding her, in his drunken

insanity, in his arms, protesting how he loved her, loved her better

than he did--better than--his grog?

The monsters missed their aim. Mrs. Reagan spoke kindly to him as though

in her own bed; begged him to get up and go home with her. No he would

not. She might go back to her old missionary paramour. She might go to

---- no matter where, he was drunk. But he could not get up, for the

villains had stripped him of every stitch of clothing; they had not even

left him a shirt. So she went away, sorrowing.

"Tom," said she, "come, go home with me, that is a good boy, I feel so

faint and weak." Tom was a good boy; who had ever said it though? One,

one he remembered, and these words came like hers and nestled down in

his heart. They will live there and drive out evil ones.

Tom went home with her, giving her his arm and telling her to lean upon

it. Tom was not the best of guides, he made several missteps that day,

for tears dimmed his eyes, but he made one good step, it was up the

ladder of reform.

"Mrs. Reagan," said he, "let me stay here to-day, I have got no home,

and I don't feel as though I wanted to go back to Cale Jones's."

No. He did not want to go back there. He had heard the sound of his dead

mother's voice, saying, good boy. Nobody would say, good boy, if he went

back there. Conscience too was doing her work; conscience told him what

he had done to a woman who now said, "good boy."

So he stayed--he was a good boy--she was sick and he waited upon her all

day. At night he was going to get Mr. Elting and Nolan to go with him

and bring Reagan home. That would be his reward. He has his hand upon

the door to go out, but waits a moment to see who comes. He opens it to

a hurried footstep, and in bounds Wild Maggie, her face radiant with

health, strength, and the lovely bloom of country life.

"Where's father? Mother sick? What's the matter?"

Her mother draws the clothes over her face. She would not have her

daughter see her weep.

"Tom, my boy, tell me; come, Tom, that is a good boy--the truth, nothing

but the truth--I must know it."

Good boy, again, and his heart overflowed. He could stand kicks, and

cuffs, and curses, without a tear, but he could not hold out against,

"good boy."

"Maggie, I will not lie to _you_, I could not; but I can't tell you the

truth."

"Why?"

"I am 'fraid you won't call me good boy again."

"Yes, I will. I don't believe you are a bad one."

"And you won't hate me?"

"No, no; she cannot hate you, for you have been good to her mother,

to-day."

"Mother! Oh! I know all about it. You need not tell me. Only, where is

he? I will go and bring him home."

"Did Heaven ever give a mother such another child?"

Yes, many such. Many a flower would send its blossomed sweets to many a

heart, but for blighting frosts in its young years.

"What sent you home, Maggie?"

"I don't know, mother; I felt as though I was wanted. Something told me

so. I dreamed so for three nights, and so I came."

She was soon told everything. Tom made a full confession; and still she

did not hate him. She told him how he could help her. He should go with

her; she was going to bring her father home. She gave him a little

bundle of clothes to carry; and away they went. She stopped on her way

down, at the police office, made her complaint, and took an officer

along with her, who arrested Cale Jones and the two women; the rest of

the gang were prowling for prey somewhere else. The women were sent to

the Island, next day, for they had no friends. The plotter of villainy

had. The Alderman of the Sixth Ward, was his friend; political friend;

him he sent for; and after being an hour in custody, he was discharged;

and this was the end of his punishment.

Reagan, since his wife's visit in the morning, had steadily refused to

drink any more, and had become in a measure sober. It was a sad meeting

with his daughter. At first, he refused to see or speak to her. He was

ashamed. Nature overcame him at last, and he got up and pulled off the

dirty suit his robbers had put on him, preparatory to kicking him into

the street, and put on the clean ones, which Maggie and Tom had brought

him; and then they took him, each by an arm, and went home. It was a sad

home; it never will be a happy one again. Then she went to work and got

him some supper, spending of her own little store to buy some tea, and

such things as he could eat.

"Now," says she, "I have got another thing to do to-night, for I must go

back again in the morning. Tom, I am going to provide you with a home.

You must go to the House of Industry, reform, and make a man of

yourself."

Reader, do not forget. This ministering angel, is Wild Maggie.

Most willingly he went with her, and was most kindly received by the

Superintendent. There we will leave him awhile. We shall see him again

perhaps.

Maggie went back to her country home. Her father remained sick for some

days, and then went to work, but his spirit was broken, he grew more and

more uneasy, and finally, in a fit of despondency, met with one of his

old cronies, and back he went, down, down, to his former degradation.

Had he gone back and renewed his pledge, after his first fall, when he

was dragged down, he might have been saved; but he would not; he said,

he had proved himself incapable of ever being a man again, and so he

sunk in despair. Week after week his clothes, his furniture, his wife's

clothes, even her daughter's gift-Bible, went for rum. Nothing was left,

but starvation. Yes, there was one thing left for her--one thing that

that wife had never before received from her husband.

A blow, a black-eye, and a kick. It was one drop too much in her cup of

affliction, and she parted with him for ever, and came back to her old

home, the House of Industry.

Tom welcomed her with a smile; he was door-keeper now.

"It is better to be door-keeper," said he, "in the house--you know the

rest. I will call Mr. P. I am sure, he will give you a home, he said as

much yesterday. I shall write to Maggie now, and let her know all about

it."

"You are very kind, Tom, to say that."

"Well, wasn't she kind to me? Where should I have been all this time, if

it had not been for her? I think, we will get the old man in again,

yet."

"No, no, he is passed everything, now. He never was so bad before, never

struck me a blow before. A blow from him! Oh! it is dreadful. I never

can forgive that."

"Don't say that. 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who

trespass against us.'"

"True, my boy, you have taught me a lesson. I will forgive, but I don't

think he will ever get over this bout; he is very violent."

"The most violent fires are soonest burnt out."

Tom had faith, she had none, she was a sad victim of despair--a

despairing wife. But time will heal the deepest wounds. She went to

work, grew cheerful, and contented there to spend the remainder of her

life, which she said, would not be long. Of that she seemed to have a

presentiment, and made all preparation which it becomes a reasonable

mortal to make for such a prospective journey. She seemed to have but

one wish.

"Oh! if I could see my husband as he was a few months ago, I should be

willing to die then. But I cannot bear to die now with the thought upon

my mind, that he would never shed a tear at my grave."

His time was coming. Tom was a philosopher. "Didn't I tell you," says

he, "that the fire would soon burn out. He was here last night, walking

up and down the pavement for hours, looking down into the kitchen when

you were at work."

"Perhaps he wanted to strike me again."

"No, he was as sober as a judge."

"Oh, dear! then may be he was hungry, poor man."

"So I thought, and went and bought him a loaf of bread. When I gave it

to him, he burst into tears, and walked away to a cart and sat down to

eat it. He was hungry, and for fear he would be dry, and go to that

cursed hole--"

"Don't swear, Tom."

"I can't help it; it is one, and why not call it so? I did not want him

to go there, and so I went and got him a cup of water, and carried to

him, and then I thought if everybody knew what a blessed thing it is to

give these poor old drunkards bread and water instead of rum, how much

happiness they might make in the world. And then I talked to him about

taking the pledge again, but he said, 'no, Tom, I took it once, I don't

want to break it again.' 'No,' said I, 'you did not break it, it was me

that did it, I was the guilty one.' And then I told him all about it. He

never knew before. The rascals there told him, that he and Sally came

there together and called for whiskey, and then got drunk and went to

bed together, and he believed it; his mind was so confused that he

forgot all about the past, and he never knew till now that they had lied

to him so shockingly. 'You don't know,' says he, 'Tom, what a load you

have lifted off of my conscience.' Then I asked him where he was going

to sleep that night?

"'Where? where should I? In the cart or under it. Anywhere I can find a

hole. Me that have had a house of my own, and built a score of houses

for others to sleep in, have not slept in one these two months. Perhaps

never shall again.'

"'Yes you will,' says I; 'you will sleep in that one to-night.'

"'What! under the same roof with my wife once more; I don't know as I

could stand it; it is more happiness than I deserve.'

"'No, it is not; and if you will go away in the morning, and stay away

all day, and come back at night as sober as you are now, I will ask the

Superintendent to take you in for good.'

"'I will, I will! I will go away and sweep the streets to-morrow; they

will give me another loaf of bread, and that is more than I have had for

a whole week.'

"So you see, he will come again to-night, and then it is temperance

meeting, and we will get him in. Depend upon it, if he ever takes the

pledge again he will never break it."

True to his word, Reagan came the next night sober.

"See," said he, "Tom, I have got a quarter of a dollar, and have not

spent it for liquor. If some of the harpies knew I had it, how they

would be after me."

He hesitated long about going into the meeting. He was afraid his wife

would be there, and he could not bear to meet her. She was equally

afraid to meet him. Finally, one of the assistants went out and talked

with him.

"Do you think," he replied, "that I could ever be a man again? I am

afraid there is not enough of me left to make one. Manhood is all gone.

I feel as though I had made a beast of myself so long, that I must

always be a beast. But if you think there is enough left of the old

wreck--"

"Enough? Yes; come along."

This was a new voice, just come up on the other side. He looked around;

it was Nolan.

"Nolan, my old friend--you were a friend to me; and I will try if Mr.

Pease will agree to shut me up and keep me out of the way of these

alligators. Look at them. Don't they lie about just like alligators in

the mud and swamps, ready to snap up every poor dog that comes within

reach of their tails or jaws?"

Well, he took the pledge, and in due time we will see how he kept it.

While I give my readers a little respite from the contemplation of such

characters as have been introduced in the preceding chapters, I propose

to introduce a little episode in the life of two of those which they

have seen engaged in the noble work of reclaiming and sustaining a poor

inebriate in his efforts to become a sober man. That they had reason to

believe in the possibility of such reclamation, the reader will

understand after reading the historical facts of the next chapter.

CHAPTER V.

THE TWO PENNY MARRIAGE.

"And ye twain shall be one flesh."

"What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder."

No, not even rum; yet it often does. We have just read of one of the

many thousand sad instances that have occurred in this world, of rum

separating those who had taken upon them that holy ordinance which makes

them as one flesh, one heart, one mind; and, unless such have one mind

both to be drunk together, how can they live with one another? How can

they live in rum's pollution in the holy bonds of matrimony? There is

nothing holy about such a sinful life.

Do away with the cause--abolish intoxicating liquor from society, and

you will not only rivet those holy bonds with golden rivets, but you

will shut up nine-tenths of the brothels and gaming houses in this city.

Without rum they could not live over the first quarter's rent day. With

it their profits are enormous--its effects awful.

I could point you to a house in this city, with its twenty-five painted

harlots, where the sales of wine in one year have been thirteen thousand

bottles, costing $15,000, and selling for $39,000. And why not a profit,

since men and women will get drunk in a palace, the mere repairs or

additions to which, in one season, cost the almost incredible sum of

$70,000?

Who furnished the money? Who made the inmates what they are? Those who

_made the wine_; not those who furnished the grape juice, for it is

probable that the whole did not contain a thousand bottles full of that

liquor.

What caused the inmates to be what they are? Rum!

Who made them harlots? Not those who marry, or are given in marriage.

Marriage is one of the best preventives of licentiousness, but it is not

often perhaps that it produces so positive a reformation as in the

following cases.

"I have married," said Mr. Pease to me one day, "some very curious

couples. That of Elting was very remarkable."

He was sitting one evening, trying to post up his books, amid continued

interruptions, such as, "Little Lucy's eyes are worse to-night, sir."

"Let me see. She must go into the hospital. Send the sore-eye nurse to

me. Take this little girl to your room--keep her eyes well washed with

cold water, and use that ointment. Report to me to-morrow. Go."

"That is a fine-looking woman."

"Yes, and an excellent nurse. She lived last year in one of those Centre

street cellars. She came here with both eyes nearly out of her head;

gouged by a drunken husband. We put her into the sore eye hospital, and

soon found she would make a good nurse for the afflicted children."

"Mr. Pease, is it the powder once and the pills every hour, or is it

t'other way?"

"Exactly. The other way. You have hit it. The powder is Dover's Powder,

to allay fever. The pills are cathartic. Go."

"Cathartic. I never heard of that pill-maker before. Wonder if he will

make as many as Brandreth has," says this interrupter as she goes away.

"Susan Apsley says you promised her she might go out this evening."

"Did she come in all right when she was out before?"

"All right, sir."