That was a sad funeral cortege which accompanied the dead bankrupt back

to the city. Sad, not so much from sorrow, as wounded pride and fallen

greatness. It was sad to see the daughters of a dead father absolutely

refuse to travel upon the same train, with an only brother's wife. He

would not go without her, and so they went without him. It was night

when they arrived. They had despatched John in advance, to set the house

in order, and meet them at the depot with the carriage and a hearse. The

latter was there, the former was not, and they had to submit to the

indignity of a hired hack. At the house, all was dark. What could it

mean? "That villain, John, has got drunk again!" That was the fact. Who

taught him? He was only following the long-studied precepts of his

employer and lady, the young ladies, the young gentlemen, and all their

fashionable associates, in their fondness for exhilarating drink. Why

should he not get drunk?

They rung the bell angrily. It was a long time before it was answered.

Then a heavy footstep came down stairs--not up from the servants'

room--and approached the door, and opened the inner one, so that he

could see through the blind who demanded admission. A sharp-faced, keen,

black-eyed, weasel-looking man, with a chamber-lamp in his hand, and one

of Mr. Morgan's dressing gowns upon his back, stood before the

astonished family with the question trembling upon his lips, of "Vats

you vant here?"

"Want? we want to come in, to be sure, why don't you open the door? Who

are you? What are you doing here?"

"Vell, you can't come in. I is the sheriff's man, and he has put me

keeper here, and he tells me not to let anybody in without his order.

You must go to him. Vat you vakes me up for?"

And he closed the door in their faces, and they heard his heavy step

reverberating through the long hall, and up the broad stair-case, as he

went back to his lounge, "in my lady's chamber."

There were heavy hearts upon the outside of that door. The men had

brought the coffin up, and set it down upon the steps. The hearse and

hired hack had driven off. There lay the dead--he never would say, "This

is my business," again--the wine-maker might say so. Both were silent.

Neither would own his work. In the vaults of that house, three thousand

dollars worth--no, _cost_--of wines were stored. Fifty thousand dollars

worth of the richest rosewood and mahogany furniture, china, cut glass,

and silver ware, stood idle, while its late possessor lay in his coffin

upon the threshold, with his family standing around, vainly asking

permission to rest the body of the dead owner one night, in its journey

to the tomb. What should they do? Walter, if he had been there, could

have directed what to do. He was not. Then he was cursed in thought, if

not word, because he was not there.

"It is all his fault," said Elsie; "it was his abominable marriage that

killed father."

Where was her husband? She looked around for him. He had slipped away

"to get a drink." What a brute, she thought. So he was. That is what

going to "get a drink" makes of a man.

"We must go to Mr. Grundy's," said the widow.

How? The hearse and hack were gone, and could not be got back in an

hour. A passing cart was called, and the coffin of the millionaire

placed upon it, and the family followed, to knock at the door of a

neighbor's house, with the same results--to be answered by another

sheriff's officer, but who, by chance, happening to be an American, and

possessed of common sense enough to know that the dead would not steal,

and those who attended upon him would not be likely to do so, he opened

the door, lit the gas, called up one or two of the servants still left

in the house, and did a few other things that natural humanity dictates

upon such an occasion. An hour after, the Grundys themselves arrived, to

find their home in the hands of a "keeper," who had let in the Morgans

by courtesy, and now admitted them as mourning friends of the family.

Here, I draw the curtain. You have already seen the termination of a man

who could leave his young wife and her dead father standing in the

street, to go and "get a drink." It was him that died in the rat hole,

in Cow Bay. It was Elsie that told how he died, how she gave birth to a

child by the side of her dead husband, and how the rats sucked up the

life blood of that child.

You have seen Matilda, before. Turn back to a picture, in Chapter V.,

and look at her upon her wedding-day. It is needless for me to go with

you along the beaten path of her career, down, down, down, from

ball-room to bar-room; from house of----"a place to meet a friend"--to a

house of----"ladies' boarding-house"--to a house of common resort--the

abode of wretchedness, woe, sin, degradation, disease, and "painted

sepulchres"--from that to a low room, with "my man," and, finally, to

fill the picture in the Twopenny Marriage.

Let the curtain fall--the dead rest in peace.

Watch the living.

CHAPTER X.

ATHALIA, THE SEWING GIRL.

"It is their husbands' fault, if wives do fall."

"The weakest goes to the wall."

Walter came down on the train with the Grundys. They urged him to

"abandon his folly, and go home with them." They little thought they had

no home to go to themselves. He said, no; she was his wife, and he never

would leave her. He thought so then. If he had left the bottle, he never

would.

"Where shall we go, Athalia?"

"Come with me; I have a home."

So he went to her little room in Broome street. The door was fast, and

the room dark. She rapped, and was soon answered by Jeannette's voice:

"Who is there?"

"It is me."

What a world of meaning is in those three little words. How the memory

of many a wife will wander back into other days, when she heard a

midnight rap, and putting her head out of the chamber window, where she

had been "making a frock and rocking the cradle" all the early part of

the night; and how her heart palpitates at the answer to her half

spoken, half whispered question, "Who is there?"

"It is me," comes up to her ready ear in the open window. Down goes the

sash, for the wind might blow on "the baby;" they "have got a baby." In

a minute, oh half that time, "me" sees the light through the key-hole,

and hears a little step running down stairs. It stops an instant to set

the lamp on the table. What for? She could hold it in one hand, while

she unlocked the door with the other. Yes, but when the door is open she

will have work for both hands--both arms will be around the neck of

somebody.

"Heigho, for somebody!" I wish every loving heart had somebody; somebody

to say, "It is me."

"Wait a minute."

A little light flashed through the key-hole, then the bolt went back

with a click, then the door opened, a night-cap and white gown, a pair

of blue eyes, and some pale red curls, were seen a moment, and then a

very light scream, and Athalia and Walter were in the dark again. The

door was closed in their faces. Was she, too, shut out from her home?

"Open the door, Jeannette. Never mind your night-gown."

"Oh. I cannot; indeed I cannot. That is not all. Charles is here."

Charles there, at that time of night, and she in her night-gown! What

can it mean?

"Jeannette, what does it mean?"

"Now, don't go to being angry with me, Athalia." And she opened the

door a little way, and looked out. She had slipped on a wrapper, and

slipped off the night-cap. What is there in a night-cap, or night-gown,

that a lady should be ashamed to be seen in it?

"What does it mean, Jeannette?"

"Oh, now, don't go to being angry, Athalia, don't. Indeed I could not

help it, I was so lonesome after you went away--only think of staying

here all alone."

"Shame on you, Jeannette. And so because you were lonesome, you have

taken cousin Charles to sleep with you."

"Yes; why not?"

"Why not! why, Jeannette?"

"Why, Athalia, we are married. You don't think I would do it if we were

not, do you?"

"Married! ha, ha, ha! Come in Walter, you can come in now. We are all

married folks together. Ha, ha, ha!"

How her laugh did ring. She was anything but angry.

"Why, Athalia, you are only joking."

"No. I am in sober earnest."

How Jeannette did laugh, and hug, and kiss Athalia; and then she ran to

the bed, and there was a "kiss in the dark."

"Come, Charley, get up and see the bride. Come, we are all married folks

together."

"Oh, Jeannette, we must not carry on so with Walter now."

"Why not? Are we not all married? If we cannot carry on a little now, I

don't know when we should."

"Yes, but--"

"What?"

"Walter's father is dead."

"Oh, dear! don't say that."

"I must; it is true. And Walter must stay here to-night; how shall we

fix it?"

"Oh, that is very easy. There are two matrasses on the bedstead; we will

lay one down here--the bolster will do for pillows--there are some nice

clean sheets, and a spread. We will just take that side curtain and turn

it round, and pin it to the window curtain, and then you see how easy it

will be to have two beds and two bed-rooms. You and I will sleep on the

floor, and Charles and Walter shall sleep on the bed."

No; that would never do. Charles and Walter would both sleep on the

floor, and their wives should sleep where they always had, together on

the bed.

That the girls would not listen to. They were their guests, and they

must sleep on the bedstead--that was the state bed--the bed of

honor--Walter had never slept on the floor in his life. Then the men put

in their argument, and thus the question stood, until it seemed likely

that both beds would remain unoccupied. Finally, it was settled by

"compromise." Charley whispered Jeannette, and Jeannette answered aloud,

"Why not? So we will. Husbands and wives should sleep together. Always

together. What business has a man sleeping with anybody else?"--with

another woman she thought.

So it was settled how they should sleep. Then there was another

contention where, that seemed likely to be as interminable as the first.

Finally, Athalia settled it. She took Walter by the arm and said,

"Come," leaving Jeannette and Charley with the light, "because they were

married longer and were more used to it."

Walter was soon asleep. Athalia lay listening to a low conversation

between Charles and Jeannette, in which she caught, now and then, a

word. "The West--new country--log cabin--little farm--cows, and pigs,

and chickens--and a baby"--she thought that--and she thought how happy

they will be, and how much better off than here in the city. So she was

not at all surprised when Jeannette told her, in the morning, what they

had concluded to do. In three days they did it.

When I was in their little cabin, and heard from the lips of Jeannette

several things that I should not have known otherwise, I found that they

had realized all their hopes, for they had not built them high. And when

she found that I knew Athalia, how she did hang upon my arm, and insist

that I should stay all night, and sleep in the little bed-room where the

rose-bush I had so much admired, overhung the window, and tell her the

story, how she got along, and what became of her, and all about it.

Shall I begin at the beginning, or in the middle, or at the end?

"Oh, at the beginning, to be sure. Where is she now? Is she alive?"

That is it; you are a true woman. You tell me to begin at the beginning,

and then the very first question you ask is about the end. I see you are

impatient, and so I will gratify you. I will begin at the beginning of

the end, and finish in the middle. Athalia, poor girl, she is--

"Oh, don't say that--not dead!"

No, no; she is alive and very well, and almost as pretty as ever. She is

a widow, and lives in New York, and keeps a boarding house, and is

making a comfortable living.

"A widow! why, where is her husband?"

Why, where should he be? if she is a widow, he must be either dead or in

California; it is about all the same in New York.

"What did he die of?"

The same disease that kills nine-tenths of his class--rum!

"Oh, dear, and he such a fine young man. I would have married him

myself, if it had not been for Charley. Well, I have one great blessing;

if Charles is not so rich as Walter, he is as sober as a judge. Oh, I

forgot to tell you that he is almost one; he is Justice of the Peace.

But do tell me, did Walter leave her rich? The Morgans were very

wealthy."

Ah, I see now; Athalia never told of their failure, and how all their

wealth vanished like morning dew; that all those five dollar carpets,

thousand dollar mirrors, and single chairs that cost more than all your

neat furniture, were sold under the hammer to pay debts; and that Walter

had not a cent in the world, and that he lived a long time upon the

money which she earned, with,

"'Work, work, work.

From weary chime to chime,'

Through many a day and many a night,

'As prisoners work for crime;'

until she sighed and sung:

"'Oh, for only one short hour,

To feel as I used to feel,

Before I knew the woes of want,

And the walk that costs a meal.'"

"And did Walter do nothing?"

What could he do? He knew nothing--had never learned to do anything;

besides that, how could he take to any occupation, when he had always

been above work, and free from want. If his father had put him into his

counting-room with old Precision, he might have been a good bookkeeper,

and could now have had employment upon a salary. As it was, he was a

useless, worthless member of society. His father had been asked, if he

did not think of putting Walter into some situation where he would learn

to help himself, but his answer was, "that is my business;" and there

ended the matter.

Finally, after some months of idleness, supported by his young wife's

toil, a few friends concluded to advance him a thousand dollars, to go

South, where, as he thought, he could make a fortune; and if he got away

where nobody knew him, he could go into some sort of business. Athalia

went with him. They landed at Savannah, put up at the best hotel, four

dollars a day, and wine and cigars, upon an average, six more. It was

easy to calculate just how long a thousand dollars would last at that

business. Athalia pined in idleness; of course, a young "Northern

merchant's" wife could not use her needle in a city where a lady, of any

pretensions to fashion, would not help herself to a glass of water if

the pitcher stood at her elbow. A slave, always ready at her bidding,

must be called to wait upon "young missus."

It did not take Walter long to form new acquaintances; besides, he met

with several of his old college chums, and so it was a day here and a

night there, upon this plantation and that; of course, his pretty wife

was always welcome, so long as nobody knew that she was a sewing girl.

That secret leaked out at last, and then--

"What then?"

Then those who had courted and fawned around the rich merchant's wife,

and thought she was the prettiest and best bred woman, and most

intelligent, they had ever met with, and the most modest and most

amiable--

"So she was. I never saw her equal."

Nor they either--but then she was a sewing girl, when he married

her--perhaps never was married. That was finally annexed by envious,

malicious, jealous rivals, who felt her superiority, and how much more

she was admired by the gentlemen than they were.

All this came at last, by a true friend--a slave--to Athalia's ear. She

had felt the chilling change, and, finally, obtained the secret from her

yellow chambermaid. Her mind was instantly made up. That night she

packed her trunk; Walter, as usual, was out "attending to business,"

such as young men often attend to at midnight in some private back

room, sitting around a table, counting spots upon little bits of

pasteboard.

The steamboat would leave the next morning for Charleston. She waited in

vain for Walter, and then wrote a long letter, detailing all the facts

and giving ample reasons for her course, and begging him to abandon his;

to settle up what matters he had as soon as possible and follow her.

Then she laid down for a short nap, with orders to Mary to wake her if

Mr. Morgan came in, and if not, to call her in time for the boat at any

rate, and then to give him the letter. It was an impulsive step, but

that was her nature.

"So it was. She always thought and acted at the same moment; and almost

always right."

In one week she was back in her old room, which she had let temporarily

during her absence. In one week more she had an additional room and a

few girls at work for her at dress-making. She issued her little card,

sent it around to old customers, and got some new ones, and all the work

that she could do.

In three months she had ceased to pay rent for furniture; she had bought

and paid for it, and was making weekly deposits of little sums in the

savings bank. Then her husband came back. Where his thousand dollars had

gone you may judge, when I tell you that Athalia had to go and redeem

his trunk, retained on board a brig for his passage. He could not go

himself for it, he was sick; with what complaint you may easily judge; I

shall not tell you, as he did not tell his wife, until she too was sick,

and in her ignorance, neglected to call a physician, until so bad that

she was laid up from work, and of course lost custom. How her little

store melted under this accumulation of expense! Finally, they got

agoing again, and she persuaded him to get into some kind of employment.

What could he do? There was but one "genteel"--mark the word--business

that he knew of. He became a bar keeper. He had one regular customer. It

was Walter Morgan!

Down hill is an easy road. He took it.

Athalia soon found some of her best customers dropping off.

"What was the cause?"

There were two. In the first place Walter had been the means of getting

a notorious courtezan to give her custom to his wife. He brought her

there and introduced her as Mrs. Layton, formerly of South Carolina, now

living with her nieces and daughter in this city. She used to come

often, always in her carriage, with liveried servants.

Once Athalia rode home with her to fit a dress to "a sick young lady,

that boarded with her." She found that Mrs. Layton lived in an elegant

four story house, near a church and in a very respectable neighborhood

in a fashionable street.

Her rooms were furnished with a degree of splendor almost equal to the

Morgans. Little did she suspect the character of the house, particularly

as her husband had introduced her there.

But there was another cause why she lost her best customers. In a

fashionable soiree, to which Walter still found his way occasionally,

when questioned by a score of his old acquaintances, with whom he used

to flirt, and every one of whom were envious and jealous of Athalia,

they rallied him most unmercifully upon his marriage with a sewing girl,

and then the base cowardly wretch--rum makes such of gentlemen--declared

upon his honor that he was not married. It was only a marriage of

convenience.

"A mistress--a mistress--oh! that alters the case. And only to think we

have been getting the shameless thing to make our common dresses. Well,

I never will go near her again."

"Nor I. Nor I. Nor I."

"And that accounts for what I heard the other day, that she was seen

riding home with that Madame Layton, who keeps a house of assignation in

---- street."

"How did she know that she kept such a house!"

It was Matilda Morgan, that said it. She had been there.

The train once lighted, which fires the dry prairie, how it sweeps on

before the wind. It little regards who stand in the way. As little

regards the slanderer, and as rapidly spreads the fire of a scandalous

tongue, devouring its victims with a consuming fire.

Athalia was a victim. The man who should have been her shield, had

himself thrown the first dart. It had been more envenomed by a pretended

female friend, who had told her all that he said. She could have

forgiven him everything else, she would not forgive him that. Things now

looked dark. She was obliged to look for work among a class of

customers where nothing but the direst necessity would have led her. Her

husband had tended bar, until his employer found that he drank up all

the profits. Now he was drinking up the hard earnings of his wife. Then

he began to stay out nights. Where, she could only guess. One day she

sent him to pay the rent. It was the last money she had. About a week

after, the landlord called for it. He had not seen Walter, had not been

paid, and was very sorry for her, but he must have the rent.

"Would he wait a few days? she hoped her husband would pay it."

There was a curl of derision upon his lip. What could it mean?

"Fact is, Mrs. Morgan, or Miss Lovetree, or whatever your name is, I let

the premises to you, and look to you for the rent. I shall not run after

such a miserable drunken ---- as Walter Morgan."

She did not drop dead under this heavy blow; she simply said, "you shall

have your rent to-morrow."

"Very well then; and you may as well look for a new place too, in the

course of the week."

"I intend to," was her calm reply.

When he was gone, she slipt on her bonnet and shawl, and thought she

would take her watch and ear-rings, and a few little things, where her

husband had twice taken them before, and whence she had redeemed them,

after he had spent the money; for money he would have, and if she did

not give it to him, he would steal her things and pawn them. He had

done so now. All was gone, even her large Bible, the present of her

dying mother. Her only alternative was to get a Jew to come and look at

the furniture, and advance enough to pay the rent. On the way she

thought she would take a dress home, and got the money for that. She

knew it was going to a house of bad repute; she had been obliged to work

for such, and on several occasions Walter had carried them home. It was

a sort of perquisite with him to get the pay for such. She looked for

the dress, that too was gone. There was another to go to the same house,

which she could finish in about an hour. It was her only resource for

the necessities of to-morrow. At nine o'clock she took it upon her arm

and went out, and with trembling step, up to the door of a magnificent

house, only one block from Broadway.

As the door opened for her, half-a-dozen "up town bloods," came out.

"I say," said one of them, before he was out of her hearing, "I say,

Fred, that is Walt. Morgan's gal, let us go back and see the fun."

The voice was familiar, though the bloated countenance of the roue was

not. She had heard it before. It was George Wendall.

"See the fun"--what could it mean? She felt like anything but fun. Is it

fun for a man to see a woman's heart broken?

They went on, Fred remarking, "she is dev'lish pretty; curse me if I

don't try my hand there. I will walk into her affections."

Such is the opinion of the roue--that the door of woman's affections is

always open for every self-conceited puppy to walk in.

Her heart was in her throat. She choked it down, and went in and

inquired for Miss Nannette, and was shown up to her room. A gentleman

was there, whom Nannette introduced as Mr. Smith, from the South.

He might be from the South, but Athalia knew him to be a married man,

with a sweet young wife and two children, in this city.

The dress was to be tried on, and Nannette began to strip off without a

blush. Athalia did blush, and did object, and would not stay.

"Well, then, George, go down a few minutes to the parlor, that is a good

soul, she is so fastidious."

No, he did not want to be seen there; he would go home.

"Well, then, give me some money to pay for making this dress. You gave

me the stuff, you might as well go the whole figure."

He handed her a ten dollar bill; she handed it to Athalia,--the dress

was only five--remarking:

"Give him the change; I won't take but a five out of it this time."

Athalia had no change. She looked at him, to be certain of her man, and

remarked:

"No; I will keep the whole, and credit him the balance, on account of

seven dollars he has owed me these two months, for work for his wife."

He stammered something about mistake--not him--cursed blunder--and left

the room.

The dress fitted beautifully, and Athalia felt the soothing influence of

praise for her work, and would have left happier than she came, but just

then her ear caught a voice in the next room. She listened. A woman

replied:

"Yes, if you have brought any money. I have made up my mind that you

shall not stay in this room another night without you give me more

money."

"Oh, Josephine, I have got something better than money for you. Look

here."

"Oh! you are a dear good fellow, after all. What a pretty watch, and

what a dear little locket. That will do. Now you may stay all night, and

to-morrow we will go down to Coney Island again, and have a good time.

I'll pass for your wife, you know."

There was a door opening out of Nannette's room into a bath-room, and

out of that, a window into the room where the voices came from.

It was but a thought; thoughts are quick, and so were her's, and the

step that took her up on a chair, and her hand up to the curtain, which

was the only thing preventing her from seeing who owned that voice.

She looked. What a sight for a wife! She saw, what she knew before, but

would be doubly sure, that the voice was her husband's. She knew

that--she knew that he was giving her watch, and the locket which

contained the donor's likeness, that of a dear brother lost at sea--a

treasure that she would not part with sooner than her own heart--to a

woman to whom he had before given money--money that came, drop by drop,

distilled from her heart's blood, through the alembic of her needle; and

she would see--what woman would not--what wife could resist the

opportunity of seeing?--she could not--what the woman looked like, who

could displace her in her husband's affections. The first sight she

caught was her Bible upon the table.

"What could she want of that?"

She was sometimes religious--a great many of them are, and read the

Bible to find some text to justify their own course. They are also

visited by clergymen, who prefer those of "a religious turn of mind."

Then this Bible was elegantly bound, and very valuable. Then she saw her

watch in the hands of a woman with ugly red hair, with dull, voluptuous

eyes, thick lips, ugly teeth, a little snub nose, and a gaunt awkward

figure, forming altogether one of the ugliest looking women, Athalia

thought, that she had ever seen. The words burst involuntarily from her

lips:

"Oh, how ugly!"

"She is uglier than she looks," said Nannette. "She has ruined more men

than any other woman in the city. She has kicked that fool out half a

dozen times because he did not give her more money. I should not wonder

now, if he has stolen his wife's watch to give that wretch."

And this was the woman that Athalia had been toiling for her husband to

pamper. Oh, how she did pray to die!

Nannette, when she learned the facts, was furious. She would have gone

in and torn her heart out.

She said she never did have anything to do with a married man, if she

knew it. George had lied to her, and never should see her but once

again--once, to get her blessing.

Athalia was calm. She sat down a few minutes, to recover from this last

stab in the heart, and then said she would look once more and then go

home. She did look, and saw her husband locked in the arms of that

red-headed fury. Then she went home; she did not go to bed; she worked

all night putting her things in order. Next day, at ten o'clock, a red

flag was fluttering at her window, and while Walter and his mistress

were going down the Bay, her furniture was "going, going, gone," to the

highest bidder.

At sundown she was homeless, friendless, worse than husbandless, alone,

in the streets of New York!

CHAPTER XI.

LIFE AT THE FIVE POINTS.

MADALINA, THE RAG-PICKER'S DAUGHTER.

"Youth is bought more oft, than begged or borrowed."

Some wounds do never heal.

Although all my scenes are connected, and bear some relation one to the

other, yet they are not continuous. Like the Panorama of Niagara, we

must go back, cross over, look up, look down, first from this point of

view, then from that, to see all the scenes of that wonder of wonders.

So here, where a mighty torrent rushes on, sweeping a multitude down the

great cascade, we have to look at scene after scene, before we can join

them all together into one panoramic view. Our scenes, too, are as real

and life-like as those. Sometimes a tree here, a flower there, then a

little spray, then a cloud, or the natural color, a little heightened to

give effect, and make the picture more vivid; but the rocks and rushing

torrent, the real foundation of the picture, are all as nature made

them. So it is with my present panoramic view of "Life Scenes in New

York."

Again I shift the scene. Still you will find characters that you have

met before, will meet again. It is a tale of sorrow, but a tale of

truth.

A little girl was weeping there,

Pearl drops of bitter tears,

And hope with her was sleeping where

She spent her youthful years;

Her useless life was fleeing fast,

Her only school the street;

The future, gloomy shadows cast,

Where e'er she set her feet.

Her ev'ry day had one sad end,

Her ev'ry night the same;

Or sick, or well, she had no friend,

'Twere worthy of that name.

A mother gave this child her birth,

Or else she had not been;

But Judas like that mother's worth--

She sold her child to sin!

For gold she gave her child to sin,

For gold her child betray'd;

What gold would you, dear mother, win,

Your own to thus degrade?

What gold would you to others give,

From sin such others save?

Though gold is good to those who live,

'Tis useless in the grave.

Poor Madalina claims a tear,

From those her story read

Pray stop and pay that tribute here,

It is her only meed.

Now con her story careful o'er,

Her life was one of grief,

She needs not now your pity more--

To others give relief.

I suppose there are some who will turn away in disgust from the double

title of this chapter. What, they will say, can "Life at the Five

Points" have in it that is interesting to me, who lounge on silk

brocatelle, and look down upon beggar girls and rag-pickers--disgusting

objects--through lace curtains that cost more, to every window, than

would furnish a hundred families in that locality with better furniture

than they now possess?

No doubt you will turn away in disgust at the very sight of the title of

"The Rag-picker's Daughter." Yet you may find something in the character

of "Madalina," which will make you love the name. I should not wonder,

in some of my walks through the city in future years, to hear that

pretty name spoken to some sweet child, yet to be born in rose-perfumed

chamber.

Then pass not by my tale of one so lowly. See how sweet is a cup of cold

water to the dying.

Read.

"Sir," said the door-keeper, to Mr. Pease, one night, "little Madalina,

the beggar girl, is at the door, crying bitterly, and says she wants to

see you."

"I suppose," said the tired missionary, "I answered hastily, perhaps

petulantly, for I had been very much engaged all day. Tell her to go

away, I cannot see her to-night; it is eleven o'clock, and I am very

tired. She must come to-morrow."

The poor fellow turned upon his heel to go away, but as he did so, the

glimpse of his hand and motion of the coat sleeve across his eyes, told

a story.

"Tom," said Mr. P., "Tom, my dear boy, what is the matter?"

Tom did not turn round as he had been taught, and usually did, so as to

look him full in the face when he answered; in fact he did not answer

readily; there was a choking sensation in his utterance which prevented

the words from coming forth distinctly.

Now, this boy had been but a short time in "the Home," and perhaps a

more squalid, wretched, drunken boy, cannot be found in the purlieus of

the Five Points, than he was when he was almost literally picked out of

the gutter, as he had been once before he came here finally, in the way

you have already seen. Once before, he had actually been dragged out of

the filthiest hole in Anthony street, brought in, washed and dressed,

before he came to, so as to be conscious of the change that had come

over him. Then he was brought back again to his low degradation, by just

such wretches and ways of the wicked as were brought to bear upon poor

Reagan, and will be upon many others, while the destroyer is permitted

to walk abroad like a pestilence at noon-day. Now this outcast, who had

cared for nothing human, not even himself, stood vainly trying to choke

down his grief for the sorrows of a little beggar girl.

Were the reminiscences of one, almost as low down in the scale of

humanity, running through his mind--one who, after having been herself

lifted up, had exerted an influence upon him to his salvation?

The tired missionary forgot his fatigue.

"Tom," said he, springing up, "I will go and see what is the matter. Who

is this Madalina?"

"She is an Italian rag-picker's daughter, sir--they live in Cow Bay--I

used to lodge with them sometimes. That is, the mother picks rags, and

the father goes with the hand-organ and monkey."

"Ah, that is where the little tambourine girl came from that we have now

in school. There is a quarrel, I suppose, and the little girl has come

for me."

Tom went down stairs, with a heart as light as his step, "which," said

Mr. P., "I followed, I must acknowledge, rather heavily, for I did not

quite relish the idea of being wakened out of a comfortable evening nap,

to do police duty in Cow Bay, and I fear there might not have been quite

as much suavity in my tone and manner towards the rag-picker's daughter,

as we ought to use when speaking to those poor children, for I recollect

the words were, 'What do you want?' instead of, 'What can I do for you,

my child--come tell me, and don't cry any more.'"

"I don't want to be a beggar girl. I want to be like my cousin

Juliana."

"Juliana--Juliana. I don't know her."

"It is the little tambourine girl, sir," said Tom.

"Oh, I see now. Juliana is your cousin, then. Come here Madalina; let me

look at you, and I will talk about it. Did Juliana tell you to come

here?"

"Yes, sir; she has told me a good many times, but they would not let me.

I am afraid to stay there to-night, they are drinking and fighting so

bad."

"I thought so; and you want me to go and stop them; is that it?"

"No, sir. I want to stay here."

"Oh, a poor little girl flying for fear from her own parents, because

they are drinking and fighting so."

He drew her forward into the light, and looked upon as fine a set of

features as he ever saw. Her hair, which, as a matter of course, was

black almost as the raven's wing, and subsequently, when cleaned of dirt

and its accompaniments, became almost as glossy, overshadowed a pair of

the keenest, yet mildest, black eyes I ever met with. Her skin was dark,

partly natural, and partly the effect of the sun upon its unwashed,

unsheltered surface. Her teeth, oh! what a set of teeth! which, she

afterward told me, she kept clean by a habit she had of eating charcoal.

She was about twelve years old, slim form, rather tall, but delicate

structure. Her dress consisted of a dirty cotton frock, reaching a

little below the knees, and nothing else. Barefooted, bareheaded, almost

naked, at the hour of midnight, of a cold March night, a little innocent

child, wandering through the streets of New York, vainly plying the

words, "Please give me a penny, sir," to well-fed, comfortably-dressed

men, whose feelings have grown callous by constantly hearing such words

from such objects, to whom to give is not to relieve, but rather

encourage to continue in the pursuit of such ill-gotten means of

prolonging life, without any prospect of benefit to themselves or their

fellow-creatures.

"Then you don't want to beg, Madalina! Why not?"

"Because people push me, and curse me, and to-day one man kicked me

right here, sir." And she laid her hand upon her stomach, and a little

groan of anguish and accusation against the unfeeling monster who had

done the deed, went to the recording angel, and was set down in the

black catalogue of rum-selling crimes, for a day of retribution yet to

come.

"Kicked you! What for? Were you saucy?"

"No, sir; I am never saucy. My mother says if I am saucy, men won't give

me anything. I must be very quiet, and not talk any, nor answer any

questions."

"Then how came he to kick you?"

"I don't know, sir; I did not say a word, I only went into one of those

nice rooms in Broadway, where they have such beautiful glass bottles and

tumblers, and looking-glasses, and such a sight of all sorts of liquor,

and where so many fine gentlemen go and sit, and talk, and laugh, and

drink, and smoke; and I just went along and held out my hand to the

gentlemen, when one of them told me to open my mouth, and shut my eyes,

and hold out my hand, and he would give me a shilling. Now look what he

did--he put his cigar all burning in my hand, and shut it up and held it

there."

Horrible! she opened her hand, and showed three fingers and a palm all

in a blister.

"Oh, sir, that is nothing to what another one did. He put a great nasty

chaw of tobacco in my mouth, and then I could not help crying; then the

man who sells the liquor, he ran out from behind the counter, and how he

did swear, and caught me by the hair, and pulled me down on the floor,

and kicked me so I could hardly get away. But he told me if I did not he

would set the dogs on me and tear me to pieces."

"What did you go into such a place for?"

"I had been all day in the streets and only got three pennies, and I

wanted to go home."

"Well, why did you not go?"

"My mother said if I did not get sixpence to-day she would whip me, and

so I went to that place. I did not think such nice dressed gentlemen

would do so. What if they should have to beg some day! My father used to

dress as fine as they when he kept the _Cafe de l'Imperator_."

"And where have you been since they abused you so?"

"I crept up into a cart in Pearl street; I was so sick, after the

tobacco and the kick, for it was very hard."

"Could you not get home?"

"No, sir. Besides, what if I could, and my mother had been drinking. She

would kick me again, perhaps."

"What, then, are you going to do to-night? You cannot sleep in the

street; it is too cold."

"Won't you let me sleep?"----

"With your cousin Juliana?"

"No, sir, not that; she is clean, and I--I wish I was. Won't you let me

sleep on the floor?"

"You shall have a place to sleep to-night; and to-morrow, if your mother

is willing, you shall come and live with your cousin Juliana, and be

dressed as she is, and learn to sew; and when you get big enough"----

"Her mother will prostitute her, as she did her older sister to a

miserable old pimp for ten dollars."

"Tom, Tom, what is that?"

"The truth, sir. Have I ever told you a lie since I have been in your

house?"

"Well, well, Tom, take Madalina to the housekeeper, and give her

somewhere to sleep to-night, and to-morrow morning you shall go to her

mother and see what she will do."

"Lord, sir, I must go to-night. She will be off with her hook and

basket, poking in the gutters after rags before the stars go to bed.

These rag-pickers are early birds. I have known them travel four or five

miles of a morning, to get to their own walk."

"Own walk. What is that?"

"All the city is divided up among them. Each must keep to his own walk.

If one should trespass upon another, he would get a wet cloth over his

mouth some night when he was asleep, and nobody would know or care how

he died."

"The coroner's jury would inquire into the matter."

"Coroner! fiddlesticks! I beg your pardon, sir, but I did not mean to

answer you that way, though I did know that coroner's juries care the

least of anybody how such fellows die. The verdict would be 'accidental

death,' 'found dead,' 'died of visitation of Providence;' or, if the

murderers got a chance, which they might do easy enough, to chuck the

body in the dock, the verdict would be 'found drowned,' no matter if he

had a hole in his head as big as my fist."

"They could not carry the body from this neighborhood to the river

without being detected."

"Couldn't they. How did Ring-nosed Bill and Snakey Jo carry Pedlar Jake

from Cale Jones's to Peck-slip and send him afloat?"

"What, dead?"

"Yes, sir, they put too much opium in his rum to get him to sleep, so

they could rob him, and he did not wake up, and so they walked him off."

"Walked him off, how?"

"They stood him up and fastened one of their legs to his each side, so

that when they stepped his feet travelled too, and so they-went along,

talking to him and cursing him for being so drunk, till they got to the

dock."

"Where were the Police, do they never notice such things?"

"Lord, no sir, they steps round the corner when they sees a drunken man

coming, particularly if he has one of his friends with him."

"And do you think, Tom, that the rag-pickers would murder a

fellow-creature who trespassed, as they call it, upon their grounds,

without compunction of conscience?"

"Conscience, sir, what do they know about conscience? The 'Padre' keeps

their conscience."

"But the law, is there no law in this Christian City?"

"Law, pshaw! what has your book-law to do with rag-pickers' law?"

"True enough; or 'father confessors,' either."

The next morning Tom made his report. At first it was a positive

refusal. "She can make sixpence a day, and pick up enough to eat."

"Well then she shall pay you sixpence a day. She can soon learn to sew

and earn more than that. Juliana does it every day."

"But she shall not stay there nights. They will make a Protestant of

her."

"That was not the sticking point," says Tom, "if she stays here, she

cannot make a ---- of her there. The best I could do was to let her go

home nights and come days. That is better than nothing. The poor little

thing won't have to go begging, and be burned, and kicked, and vomited

with filthy tobacco cuds, and then whipped if she don't bring home

sixpence every night for her mother to buy rum with. If she cannot earn

it here at first, I will, and we will get her away entirely, after a

while."

Noble Tom! Glorious good boy! What a heart! How long is it since thou

wert as one of them, kicked and cuffed, and groveling drunk in the

gutter? Who thought then that thy rags and filth covered such a heart?

Who knew of the virtuous lessons given thee by a pious mother; and how,

after years of forgetfulness, sin, wretchedness, misery, that that good

seed would vegetate and bring forth such sweet flowers and good fruit,

as we are now tasting in these good deeds and kind words. What if nine

of the fallen whom we lift up, fall back again? so that one stand, who

shall refuse to lend a helping hand? Let us lift up the lowly and make

the haughty humble. Why should they do evil?

Again the messenger went up to the Great Recorder, and a double deed of

mercy was written down.

Wild Maggie, thy sins are forgiven. Look at thy work. This is the poor

outcast boy of whom you said, "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."

The work is more than half done.

Madalina, though still suffering from her brutal treatment, was a happy

girl when she found that she was not to be driven out to beg in the

streets.

But she could not understand why her mother wanted her to sleep at home.

Tom could. "Too young! Pooh! before she is a year-older, she will be

lost." Too true! Before she had been in "the Home" six months, she had

learned to read, write, and work, and had grown much in stature and fine

looks. Then she would have been placed in some good family, but her

mother would not consent. She still complained of her breast, and had

frequent turns of vomiting. She always felt worse in the morning,

"because," she said, "that was such a dreadful place to sleep."

Sometimes she did not come for a few days; her mother made her stay at

home and sew. She had learned to work, and her services were worth more

at that than begging.

One night she came in, in great haste, crying.

"What is the matter, Madalina?"

"My mother has had an offer for me."

"An offer for you. What is that?"

Tom looked daggers. "I told you so."

"What is it, my good girl. Tell me all about it."

"My mother bid me go out with her this evening, both of us dressed in

our best. She said she had an offer for me, and was going to meet the

man in Duane street.

"'What does the man want of me, mother?' said I.

"'Oh, he will make a fine lady of you, and you will live with him.'

"'But I don't want to live with him; I had rather live with Mr. Pease,

at "the Home." I had rather live where Tom is, for Tom is good to me.'"

Young love's first happy dream!

"But we went on, and I held my head down, and felt very bad. By-and-by I

heard my mother say,'Here she is,' and I looked up a little, and saw two

gentlemen--that is, they were clothed like gentlemen--and directly one

spoke to the other.

"'I say, Jim, she will do; give the old woman the money, and let us take

her up to Kate's.'

"Mercy on me, that voice! I felt that sore spot in my breast grow more

and more painful. I looked up; _it was the man who kicked me_; the

other was the man who put the tobacco in my mouth."

"What did you do?"

"I stood a little behind my mother while she held out her hand for the

money, and when their eyes were turned I ran. I only heard them say,

'Why, damn her, she is gone.' Yes, I was gone, and here I am. Oh, I am

so sick and so faint! do let me lay down, and don't let those men have

me. Oh dear, the thought of it will kill me!"

So it did. A cruel blow had fallen upon a tender plant. The beggar girl

might not have felt it. The little seamstress did. A taste of virtue,

civilization, christianity, friendship, love, had given the food of sin

and shame a hated taste. Sold by a mother to a libidinous brute--to a

miserable rum-selling,--worse than rum-drinking--wretch, who wears

gentlemanly garments, and kicks, burns, and gags little beggar girls. It

was too much for human nature to bear, and it sunk under this last blow,

worse than the first.

Madalina went to bed with a raging fever--a nervous prostration. All

that kindness and skill could do, was done for the poor sufferer; but

what could we do for the body, when the heart was sick?

Next morning her mother came and insisted that she should go home. They

begged, pleaded, and promised in vain; go she must.

"Never mind," said Madalina, "it will be only for a little, little

while. I shall be well--at least all will be well with me in a few

days. I cannot endure this pain in my breast. You will come and see me.

Good bye. Tom, you will?"

It was an honest, manly tear that Tom turned away to hide. Poor fellow,

he need not have been ashamed of it. Such is nature.

"She is worse, sir," said Tom, one morning, "and no wonder. I wish you

would go and see her; she wants to see you once more. Such a place to be

sick in! oh, dear! how did I ever sleep there? I wish you would go with

me to-night, about ten o'clock, when they are all in. You will see life

as it is."

"Very well, Tom, I will go. Call for me at ten, or when you are ready."

It was my fortune to drop in upon that very evening, and form one of the

company to that abode of misery,--that home of the city poor,--so that I

am able to describe it in my own language. The place where Madalina

lived, is a well known Five Points locality, called "Cow Bay."

As you go up that great Broadway of wealth, fashion, luxury, and

extravagance of this great city, from the Park and its marble halls of

justice, you will pass another great marble front--it is the palace of

trade, where the rich are clothed every day in fine linens, when they go

"shopping at Stewart's." Further along are great marts, where velvet

coverings for the floor are sold; for there are some who have never trod

upon bare boards. You need not look down Duane street, unless you have a

curiosity to see the spot where a miserable mother would sell the

virtue of her child to a wretch whose trade is seduction. Don't look

into that little old wooden shanty at the comer of Pearl street; it is a

"family grocery." The little ragged girl you see coming out with a rusty

tin coffee-pot, has not been there for milk for her sick mother--her

father is in the hospital on the opposite side of the way--his arm was

broken in a "family quarrel." You will pass the Broadway Theatre before

you reach the next corner, with its surroundings of fashionable

"saloons," into any of which you may go without fear of losing caste

among genteel brandy-smashers and wine-bibbers. Perhaps you will be

amused with a small play, such as burning, kicking, or vomiting a little

beggar girl; for nice young men are fond of theatrical amusements. Do

not go into that place of "fashionable resort," the theatre, if it is a

hot evening, for it is worse ventilated than the black-hole of Calcutta,

and if the fetid air does not breed a fever, it will breed a feverish

thirst, which will tempt you to quench it in potations of poison.

Probably that is why it was thus built.

A few steps beyond is Anthony street. Stop a moment here, and look up

and down the great thoroughfare of New-York before you leave it. A

hundred pedestrians pass you every minute; almost without an exception,

every one of them richly dressed men and women, smiling in joy and

happiness. Here is an exception, certainly. A woman in poverty's garb,

with a bundle of broken boards and old timbers, from a demolished

building, that would be a load for a pack-horse. She is followed by two

little boys, with each a bundle, crushing their young years into early

decrepitude. They have brought their heavy loads all the long way from

Murray street. They turn down Anthony; look where they go. If they live

in that street, it cannot be far, for there, in plain view, stands a

large frame house, corner-wise towards you, right in the middle of the

street. No, it only looks so, it is beyond the end of it. Yet look, note

it well, the corner of that house so plain in view, pointing towards

you, is one of the world-wide-known Five Points of New-York.

"What! not so near Broadway, right in plain sight of all who wear silks

and broadcloth, and go up and down that street every day? Surely that is

not the place where all those bad, miserable, poor outcasts live, that

the newspapers talk so much about."

"The very spot, my dear lady."

"Really, this must be looked to. It is quite too bad to think that place

is so near our fashionable street, and in sight too. I thought it was

away off somewhere the _other_ side of town. If I thought it would do

any good, I would let Peter take a few dollars and some old clothes, and

go down with them to-morrow."

"Try it, madam. Better go yourself. Let Peter drive you down; see for

yourself what has been done and what is yet to do. Lend your hand to

cure that eye-sore, which will pain you every time you pass, for you

cannot shut it out of sight, now you know where it is; so near your

daily walk or drive to Stewart's, or nightly visit to the theatre, or

weekly visit to the church. Go to-morrow; don't put it off till next

week."

In the meantime, reader, let us follow the woman and two boys with their

heavy burden, on their homeward way to-night. We will go and see where

they live.

So I followed down Anthony, past some very old rat-harbor houses, filled

with human beings, almost as thick as those quadrupeds burrow in a

rotten wharf; so on they go across Elm; now they stand a moment on the

edge of Centre, for one of the little boys has taken hold of his

mother's dress to pull her back--for she cannot look up with her

load--with a sudden cry of, "Stop, old woman! Don't you see the car is

coming? Why, you are as blind as a brick. That is black Jim a-driving,

and he had just as soon drive over the likes of you as eat. Hang you for

a fool, han't you got no sense, old stupid? There now, run like thunder,

blast ye, for here comes another of the darned cars--run, I tell you!"

She did run with her great load, till she almost dropped under its

overwhelming weight. Why should she thus labor--thus expend so much

strength to so little purpose? She knew no other way to live. Nobody

gave her remunerative labor for strong hands; nobody took those two

stout boys, and set them to till the earth, or taught them how to create

bread, and yet they must eat, and so they prowl about the pulled-down

houses, snatching everything they can carry away--a sort of permitted

petty larceny, that teaches those who practice it how to do bigger

deeds; and those old timbers they split up into kindling wood and peddle

through the streets.

Poor uncared for fellow creatures; working and stealing to escape

starvation--living, for what?--running to escape being run over by an

unfeeling driver who cared just as much for them as for so many dogs.

On they went, down Anthony street; and I followed, determined to see the

_home_ of this portion of the city poor. It was but one block

further--only one little space beyond this great, wide, open, railroad

street, whose thoughtless thousands daily go up and down from homes of

wealth to wealth-producing ships and stores, little thinking of the

amount of human misery within a stone's throw of the rails on which they

glide swiftly along.

One block further, and the street opens into a little, half acre sort of

triangular space, sometimes dignified with the name of "park," but why,

those who know can only tell, for it has no fence, no grass, and but a

dozen miserable trees; 'tis lumbered up with carts and piles of stones,

and strings of drying clothes, and scores of unwashed specimens of young

humanity, whose home is in the dirt, whether in the street or parents'

domicil.

Here let us stop and look around. A very short street, only one block

across the base of the "park," runs to the right from where we stand,

past the "Five Points House of Industry," to Cross street. This is the

most notorious little street in New York. Its name is Little Water

street. It lead from the "Old Brewery" to "Cow Bay." Who that has lived

long in this city, or read its history, particularly that portion of it

written by Dickens, has not heard of the "Old Brewery?" It is not there

now. That awful den of crime, poverty, and wretched drunken misery has

been pulled down, and in its place a substantial brick edifice, in

which is a chapel and school-room, and home of another missionary, has

been erected by the noble, generous efforts of the Ladies' Home

Missionary Society, of the Methodist Church. The old tenants have been

driven out or reformed. How different, too, are the present occupants of

that large brick pile in Little Water street, from those who filled its

numerous rooms before the missionary came there. Every room was a

brothel or a den of thieves, or both combined. Now it is a house of

prayer--a home for the homeless--a place of refuge for midnight

wandering little beggar girls.

Before us lies the misnamed, neglected triangle, called a park. At the

further end is the frame house that we see so plainly as we look down

Anthony street from Broadway. At the left, as though it were a

continuation of Little Water street, lies that notorious Five Points

collection of dens of misery, Cow Bay. It is a _cul-de-sac_, perhaps

thirty feet wide at the mouth, narrowing, with crooked, uneven lines,

back to a point about a hundred feet from the entrance. Into this court

I tracked the kindling-wood-splitters, and threaded my way among the

throng of carts and piles of steaming garbage; elbowing my way along the

narrow side-walk, and up a flight of broken, almost impassable steps, I

reached the first floor hall of one of the houses, just in time to see

that great load of wood and its bearer toiling up a narrow, dark, broken

stairway, which I essayed to climb; but just then, from the room on the

left, at the foot of the stairs, there came such a piercing,

murder-telling, woman's shriek, that I started back, grasped my stout

cane, determined to brave the worst for the rescue, made one step,

pushed open the door, creaking with a horrid grating upon its rusty

hinges, and stood in the presence of an Eve, before the fall, in point

of clothing, but long, long after that in point of sin. As I entered the

open door, she sprung towards it; her husband caught her by the hair,

and drew her back, with no gentle hand or word.

"Let me go, let me go--help!--he wants to murder me; let me go--help,

help, help!"

I did help, but it was help to the poor man, for she turned upon him

with the fury of a tiger, scratching and tearing his face and clothes,

and then settling with a grasp upon his throat, which produced the

death-rattle of suffocation.

A strong silk handkerchief served the hand-cuff's place, and to bind

hands and feet together; after which she lay quietly upon a little straw

and rags, in one corner, the only articles of furniture in the room,

except a bottle, broken cup, and something that looked as though it once

had been female apparel.

"Is this your wife?"

"She was."

"What is she now?"

"The devil's fury. You saw what she is."

"Do you live with her?"

"I did for seven years."

"Did she drink then?"

"Sometimes--not so bad."

"Did you drink?"

"Well, none to hurt. I kept a coffee house."

"And made your wife a drunkard. How came she reduced to this dreadful

condition? You are well dressed."

"I left her three months ago, and went West to find a place to move to.

She said if she could go where nobody knew her she would reform. I left

her in a comfortable room, with good furniture and good clothes. Now,

where are they? All gone to the pawnbroker's; the money gone for

rum--her virtue, shame, everything gone. How, what, and where do I find

her? As you see, crazy drunk, in this miserable hole, in Cow Bay. And my

boy, starved, made drunk, and--"

"What, have you a child by her, then?"

"Yes, a sweet little boy, six years old. Oh, I wish he was awake, that

you might see him."

And he stepped to the miserable bed, and lifted the dirty rag of a

quilt, looked a moment upon the pale boy, dropped upon his knees, raised

him in his arms, looked again wildly, and fell back fainting as he

exclaimed, "Great God, he is dead!"

What little I could do or say to relieve such heart-crushing woe as

overwhelmed this poor father of that murdered child--this miserable

husband of that wretched, crazy--rum-crazy woman, was soon done. What

else could I do than call in a police officer to take her away to

prison? whence she went to the hospital, then to the drunkard's

uncared-for, unwept-over grave!

Now, strange footsteps are winding up the rickety stairs, which I

follow. They were those of Tom and the Missionary, for here lived little

Madalina.

The second floor was divided into three rooms. We looked in as we

passed. The back room was ten by twelve feet square, inhabited by two

black men and their wives, and a white woman lodger, who "sometimes has

company." Here they eat, drink, and sleep,--cook, wash, and iron. The

latter operation is performed on the bottom of the wash-tub, for there

is no table. The front room, eight by fourteen feet, contained five

blacks, men and women. Each of these rooms rented for four dollars a

month, _in advance_.

A dark centre room, occupied by a white woman, was only six by seven

feet, for which she paid fifty cents a week. On the third floor, the

dark centre room, same size, was occupied by a real good looking, young,

healthy German woman, with her husband, a great burly negro, as black as

Africa's own son, and a fine looking little white boy, four years old,

as a lodger. We found the door shut, and no ventilator bigger than the

key-hole. There _was_ a smell about the air.

In the back room, ten by twelve, we found the wood-splitters--the woman

and her two boys, a negro and his wife, a woman lodger, and occasional

company. The rent of this room is one dollar a week in advance. The

total amount of furniture, was not good security for one week's rent.

"Good woman, why do you bring all your great piles of wood up these

steep, slippery stairs, to fill up your room?"

"Cot in himmel, vare vould I puts him? In te court? De peoples steal him

all."

True, there was no place but in that one room to store up a supply,

while the time of gleaning was good. Then it has to be carried down to

the court, to be split up into kindlings, and then again carried up for

storage. How so many find room to live in such narrow space, if our

readers would learn, let them go and make personal inquiry. They will

find plenty of just such cases, with slight search.

Up, up again, one more flight of creaking stairs, without bannisters,

the thin worn steps bending beneath our tread, and we are on the upper

floor of this one of a hundred just alike "tenant houses." Along the

dark, narrow passage, opening by that low door at the end, into a room

under the roof, ten by fifteen feet, lighted by one dormer window, and

we are in the home of Madalina, the rag-picker's daughter. Home! Can it

be that that holy name has been so desecrated--that this child, with

sylph-like form and angel face, must call this room her home. 'Tis only

for a little while! She will soon have another!

In one corner of the room stood two hand organs, such as the most of us

city dwellers are daily tormented with, groaning out their horrid music

under our windows, while the grinder and his monkey look anxiously for

falling pennies or pea-nuts. These stand a little way apart, with a

couple of boards laid across the space. On these boards there had been

an attempt to make a bed, of sundry old coats, a dirty blanket, and

other vermin harbors.

On this bed lay the poor little sufferer. Not so very little either. In

her own native Italy she had been counted almost a woman.

We have seen many, many beautiful faces, but never one like this--so

angelic.

"It is a bad sign," said Tom, in answer to a remark upon the expression

of her face; "it is a sign she will soon be among those she looks so

much like. She never looked so before. She is a living angel now, she

will soon be a real one."

"Madalina, my good child," said the missionary, "how do you feel

to-night?"

"The pain in my breast has been very bad, but it is easier now. It

always goes away when you come. I am so glad you came to-night, for I

wanted to thank you for a thousand good things you have done for me."

"Are you afraid you will not get well?"

"Oh, no, I am not afraid; I know I shall not, but I am not afraid. I

don't want to live, if I must live here; look around. It did not use to

look as it does now to me; when I went out begging, and came home tired

and cold and hungry, I could lay down with the monkeys on my mother's

bag of nasty, wet rags, and go to sleep directly. Now they worry me to

death with their chattering. Do drive them down, Tom, that is a dear,

good fellow."

It would evidently have been a source of great gratification to Tom, to

have pitched five or six of them out of the window. But there were dark

eyes scowling on him, out of a dozen sockets of men who come from the

land of the stiletto, and looked now as though they could as readily use

it as play the organ and lead the monkey.

I looked about, and counted six men or stout boys, and eight women and

girls, besides several children, monkeys, tambourines and hand organs.

In one corner was the rag-picker's store. This had been the bed of

Madalina until this evening, she grew so much worse, that she was lifted

up to the bed I have described. But here she had not escaped the torment

of the monkeys. They had long been her companions and seemed determined

to be so still. They were climbing up and down, or sitting chattering on

her bed. Late as it was in the evening there were several fresh arrivals

of parties of musicians and rag-pickers from their distant walks.

Several were at supper. A long, black table with a wooden bench, on

either side, was furnished with two wooden trays, which had seen long

service and little soap. Into these was ladled from time to time, the

savory contents of a large pot simmering upon the stove. Each guest

helped himself with fingers and spoon. Whether the stew was composed of

monkey meat, or two days old veal, I cannot say. That onions formed a

strong part of the ingredients, we had olfactory demonstration. Some of

the party indulged in a bottle of wine, and we smelt something very much

like bad rum or worse brandy; but generally speaking, this class of the

city poor are not great drunkards. One end of the room was entirely

occupied by a camp bed. That is, in that narrow space of ten feet, ten

human beings, big and little, of both sexes, laid down side by side. The

balance of the family lay around here and there; some on and some under

the table, some on great black chests, of which each family had one,

wherein they lock all their personal goods from their pilfering room

mates. The stove and a few dishes finishes the catalogue of furniture.

How many persons are, or can be stowed into this one room, is beyond my

powers of computation.

Will some of my readers, who faint at the smell of unsavory food, or who

could not sleep but in fresh linen and well aired rooms, fancy what must

be the feelings of poor Madalina, who had just begun to taste of the

comforts of civilized life, now sick and dying in such a room, where the

penny candle only served to make the thick clouds of tobacco smoke more

visible and more suffocating?

One of the difficulties in all these close-packed rooms is the necessity

of keeping the door always shut, to prevent pilfering, thus leaving the

only chance for fresh air to enter, or foul air to escape, by the one

small window in the roof.

Having given you a view of the room, and its inhabitants and furniture,

let us look again upon poor Madalina, as she lies panting for breath

upon her hard pallet. Her face, naturally dark, has an unhealthy

whiteness spread over it, and there is a small, bright crimson spot upon

one cheek--the other is hidden in the taper fingers of the hand upon

which it rests. Such a pair of bright black eyes! Oh, how beautiful! Her

wavy locks of jet, are set off by a clean, white handkerchief, spread

over the bundle of rags which forms her pillow, by one of her visitors.

Now, in spite of pain, there is a smile lighting up her face, and

showing such a set of teeth as a princess might covet. Whence this happy

smile? Listen how cheaply it is brought upon the face of the suffering

innocent. She had said, "I am so thirsty, and nothing to drink but

nasty, warm tea." Directly, Tom was missing. Now he was back again,

and there he stood with a nice, white pitcher in one hand, full of ice

water, and a glass tumbler in the other. Now he pours it full of the

sparkling nectar--now he drops upon one knee and carries it to those

parched lips. Is it any wonder that she smiles? Is it any wonder that

that simple-minded, good-hearted boy should look up, as I stood looking

over the kneeling Missionary, and say, "Don't she look like an angel,

sir?"

[Illustration: THE DEATH-BED OF MADALINA.--_Page 217._]

It was an angelic smile. It was a sight worth days and nights of earnest

seeking, and yet, Oh, how cheaply purchased. Only one glass of cold

water!

Would that I had some Raphaelic power to transfer the picture of that

scene to this page, for you to look upon as well as read of, for a sight

of that face with its surroundings, would do you good. It would make you

yearn after the blessed opportunity of holding the cup of cold water to

other fevered lips, lighting up other angelic, happy, thankful smiles.

As it is, the artist has only been able to give you a faint illustration

of the principal features of this scene. So far as it goes, you cannot

but admire his skill--admire the delineator's art, by which the picture

is sketched upon the block, and the engraver's skill, who cuts the lines

by which the printer spreads the scene out before the admiring eyes of

those who read and view. Such is art, and skill, and industry. How much

better than the idle life of those who furnished the originals for these

"Life Scenes!"

Vainly we pleaded with the mother of Madalina to carry her to a

comfortable room--to my house--to any house--to the hospital--to get a

physician--a nurse--some one, at least, to give her a drink of cold

water through the next long, long day, when she would be left nearly

alone--perhaps quite so--locked in this dreadful room--while men and

monkeys, organs and tambourines, beggers and rag-pickers, were all away

plying their trades in the streets of the city. It was no use; she was

inexorable. The _padre_ was a very good doctor--the _padre_ was good for

her soul--the _padre_ would pray for her; and if she was to die, she

should not die in the house of a heretic. So we parted. It was a hard

parting, for she clung to each one as she said:

"Good bye; I wish I could go with you, but my mother--you have taught me

to obey my mother, that all good children obey their mothers--so good

bye--good bye, Tom. You will bring me another drink to-morrow? yes, I

knew you would, if I asked you, you are so good to me."

There were tears at parting, and they were not all tears of a sick

child, or good boy, but strong men wept.

"Tom," said the feeble, sobbing voice, after we had almost reached the

door, over the careless sleepers on the floor; "Tom, come back a minute,

I want to--want to--say--what if I should not see you again? I want to

send something to Mrs. Pease; she was so kind to me; I wish I had

something to send her to remember me by; but I have got

nothing--nothing. Yes, I will send her a--a little nearer."

And she put her arms around his neck, and imprinted a kiss upon his

lips.

"There, I will send her that, it is all I have--it will tell her I love

her, for I never kiss any but those I love."

Poor Madalina! Poor Tom! What must have been his feelings at that

moment, with the kiss of that angelic, dying girl burning upon his lips,

and running streams of lava down into his young heart, while these

words, "I never kiss any but those I love," are thrilling through his

brain like words of fire?

What he felt I cannot tell. I will not tell what I felt after the first

flow of scalding tears had passed away, but I fear there was an

unforgiving spirit in my heart; and if the foot which crashed that

tender flower had been there then, perhaps it and its fellow had not

carried their moving power, the head, "this side up with care." Perhaps

that head would have been pitched headlong down these long, steep, dark,

and narrow stairs, to the pavement--less hard than its guiding heart.

"We must not kill," said Tom, as we reached the street.

Had he divined my secret thoughts, or was it the response to his own?

"We must not kill those who sell the rum, or kick little children to

death, or make brutes of their mothers, but we will kill the business,

or else we will prove that all are not good men in this world who

pretend to be."

"It is greatly changed," I said to the Missionary, as we came down upon

the street, "since you have lived here; as it was some years ago, when I

first knew this locality, it might not have been quite safe to walk

alone through these streets at this midnight hour; now we have no fear.

Good night."

"It will be better two years hence, if you and I live. Good night."

"Good night. Heaven protect you, and bless your labors. Good night,

Tom."

But Tom heard me not. "I never kiss any but those I love," was ringing

in his ears. He heard nothing--thought of nothing else. Poor Tom! He

carried a heavy heart to a sleepless bed that night.

Back, up Anthony to Centre, then along that one block, and I stood and

contemplated that great sombre, gray stone building which fills a whole

square, looking down gloomily upon the multitude who reek in misery on

the opposite side of the street, or pursue their nefarious schemes of

crime within the very shadow of "the Tombs." Alas! prisons prevent not

crime, nor does incarceration work reformation upon such as dwell in

tenements such as we have just visited.

"It is but a step from the palace to the tomb."

True, and so it seemed this night; for ere I had fairly realized the

fact that I had passed over the short step of two squares between the

City prison--the Tombs--and Broadway, I stood looking into that great

palace hall on the corner of Franklin street, known as Taylor's Saloon.

Was ever eating and drinking temptation more gorgeously fitted up? How

the gilt and carving, and elaborate skill of the painter's art glitter

in the more than sun-light splendor of a hundred sparkling gas-burners.

Are the windows open? No. The ten-feet long plates of glass are so clear

from speck, it seems as though it were open space. Look in. It is

midnight. Is all still? Do the tired servants sleep? No. They are

flitting up and down, with noiseless tread, to furnish late suppers and

health-destroying luxuries, to a host of men and gayly dressed women.

'Tis the palace of luxury--'tis but a step from the palace to the

tombs--'tis but a step beyond to the home of "the Rag Picker's

Daughter"--'tis here that the first step is taken which leads to infamy

like that of that daughter's mother. 'Tis here that he, whose trade is

seduction, walketh unshamed at noonday, or prowls at midnight, to select

his victims. 'Tis here that mothers suffer young daughters to come at

this untimely midnight hour to drink "light wines," or eat ice cream,

drugged with passion-exciting vanilla.

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed the fiend as we passed, on, "rag-picking mothers

are not the only ones who traffic away the virtue of young daughters in

this rum-flooded city."

"What," said I, as I passed on, "if all the mis-spent shillings, worse

than wasted in this palace, were dropped into the treasury of the House

of Industry?"

"Cow Bay, Farlow's Court, and Rotten Row, would be no more, and my

occupation would be gone," said the fiend. "It must not be. Dry up rum,

and murder would cease and misery have no home here. It must not be.

_Our_ trade is in danger; I must alarm my friends!"

And he clattered his cloven foot down the steps of a nearby cellar,

where there were loud sounds of blasphemous words, the noise of jingling

glasses, and much wrangling, amid which I heard female voices in one of

the "private rooms," and then an order for more wine--then I heard old

cloven foot say, "give them a bottle of two-and-sixpenny cider, they are

so drunk now they wont know the odds."

Then I understood why the fiend said "our trade"--it is one which none

else than such delight in.

I listened again. There was an awful string of oaths coming up out of

the infernal regions, where men and women--street-walkers--were getting

drunk upon alcohol, carbonic acid, and cider, mixed into three dollar

bottles of "wine"--pure champagne.

"Give me my pocket-book, you----"

I cannot repeat the horrid expletives. Why does a man call a woman with

whom he associates, such vile names? Why does the woman retort upon him

that he is the son of a female dog, and call upon God to send his soul

to perdition? Because they have "tarried long at the wine; have looked

upon it when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup." Now "it

biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder."

Now the woman has picked the pocket of her male companion--I cannot say

gentleman; now he utters those terrible oaths; now she pours out such a

stream of words as would pollute the very air where virtue lives; now

there is a struggle; now a man is stabbed by a woman; now there is a

crash of broken glass, a female street-walker is knocked down with a

bottle in the hands of a man who has picked her up, and whose pockets

she has picked; surely it was no vision of the brain that fancied we saw

the incarnate fiend go down there; now there is a cry of murder; now

there is a rapping of clubs upon the pavement, and running of men with

brass stars upon the left breast of their coats; now the police bear up

a wounded man--if, Madalina was here her wounded breast would ache with

new pain--she is avenged at last; now they drag up a woman, a young

girl, on her way to the Tombs--it is Julia Antrim.

Drop the curtain. Surely you would not look into a prison cell, or go

into the police court, or with a "vagrant," not yet fourteen years old,

to Randall's Island. In some change of the scene you may see her again.

_Quien sabe?_

"It was late next morning," said Mr. Pease, "when I woke up, and then I

lay in a sort of dreamy reverie, thinking what a world of good I could

do if I had plenty of means, until near ten o'clock. Finally, I heard an

uneasy step outside my door and at length it seemed to venture to

approach, and then there was a timid rap."

"May I come in?"

"Yes, Tom, come in. What is it, Tom?"

"If you please, sir, I want to go away to-day."

"Oh, no, Tom, don't go away to-day, you remember what you promised to do

for Madalina."

"Yes, sir, and I am going to do it. I am going to see where they put

her, and then I will plant a flower there, and I will water it too, and

that is not all, either, that I am going to do with water before I die.

I am going to teach people to drink it, and not drink rum."

"Going to see where they put her?"

"Yes, sir."

"Tom, do I understand you?"

"I don't know, sir, she did."

"Tell me, my boy, what you mean. You seem a little wild, your eyes are

very red. Did you sleep any last night?"

"Sleep! could you sleep, with those words ringing in your ears all

night? Her last words--she never spoke again."

"By this time I had reached the window. I looked out. There was a 'poor

house hearse' in Cow Bay. A little coffin was brought down and put in,

and it moved away. It carried the Rag-picker's Daughter."

CHAPTER XII.

ATHALIA, THE SEWING GIRL.

"Oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths:

"Win us with honest trifles, to betray us

In deepest consequence."

At the close of chapter nine, we left Athalia standing by the side of

her trunk and bandbox on the sidewalk, in front of her now empty home.

After paying up the rent, and a few outstanding little bills, she had

but a scanty store left in her little purse. Of this she set apart, as a

sacred deposit, almost the entire sum, to redeem her Bible and

watch--the locket at any rate. Now she wished she could see Nannette,

for she was the only instrument she knew, that she could employ in the

negociation. She could not go where she lived, for fear of meeting

Walter, whom she had determined never to see again. She had sent for a

hack to take her away, she really knew not where. She had but few,

except business acquaintances in the city; none upon whom she felt

willing to call in her emergency. She felt so cast down, that she could

not look one of them in the face. She had made up her mind to go to a

hotel for the night, and leave the city in the morning; whither she knew

not; anywhere to get away, Then she thought that she could not go

without seeing Nannette, and making an effort to regain her valued

keepsakes How should she see her? what should she do?

It is an old proverb, "Wish for the devil and he will appear." Just then

a carriage drove up and stopped where she stood. She was so certain it

was the one she had sent for, that she did not observe that it contained

two ladies, until the driver had opened the door, and one of them spoke.

"Why, Mrs. Morgan, are you going away? How unfortunate. I wanted three

or four dresses made. When will you be back?"

When? How could she tell, since she did not know where she was going?

She was in a fever of excitement to go somewhere, to get away before

Walter should come. She felt as though it would kill her to see him

then.

All day she had been calm; she had found it absolutely necessary, in

order to keep herself so, to drink two or three glasses of wine. If it

had been wine, such as the fermented juice of grapes will make, it had

not done her material harm; but it was such as is made in this city, or

"got up" expressly for this market; and she began to feel the effects of

the alcohol it contained dying away. She felt as though she was dying,

too. She did not, therefore, hesitate long, or refuse the pressing

invitation of Mrs. Laylor to go home with her and stay all night.

Although she began to suspect the character of Mrs. Laylor's house, she

did not know it, or her either, or she would have spent the night where

she stood rather than in her best room.

She was still further induced to go, when she found that her companion

was Nannette. True, there was a flash, a mere flash of thought across

her mind, why so common a woman as Nannette should be in the carriage of

so reserved a lady; one who, if she was guilty of slight improprieties

herself would not be suspected for the world, and had no charity for the

inmates of houses in M---- street.

Little thought Athalia, that Nannette, when she visited Mrs. Laylor's,

passed for "a very respectable married lady, who would not be known for

anything--it would ruin her;" or else, when dressed in deep mourning,

with a thick veil over her face, which nothing could induce her to

remove, was a "very interesting young widow, of one of the first

families in the city, who was obliged, by necessity, to accept the love

of a gentleman--a married gentleman--who visited her house, but would

not make the acquaintance of any woman except one in just such a

condition as this 'sweet young widow.'"

I know, I speak it boldly, a woman now living in this city, in up-town

style, upon money obtained from six dupes, every one of whom she had "on

a string" at the same time, and some of whom she used to meet at that

very house, under just such guises. I say it, still more boldly and

truly, for "old sores must be seen to be healed," that she has thus

duped the whole six in one day. I know the woman--I know five of the

dupes, and that each one of them has a wife. Two wear the title of

Judge; one deals in flour; one in dry goods; and one has another

employment I dare not speak so boldly of, for the sake of his children

and unsuspecting wife. He drives fast horses, and truth, might drive a

good woman to despair.

Athalia little suspected all this; still less did she suspect that she

had been watched all day; that her order for a carriage even had been

intercepted, and Mrs. Laylor had come in its stead. She did not know

then that the stable owner was the paramour of Mrs. Laylor, and Nannette

the pimp of this most dangerous woman--dangerous, because she struck her

game, both male and female, out of the upper class of society, giving

them a fair start on the road down to a cellar in Cow Bay.

We have seen one of the Morgan family that she started on that course,

who run a swift race. She is now fishing for another--already has her in

her net, for she has ordered Cato to put up the baggage--already has

Athalia seated by her side, condoling with her in her afflictions,

giving her sweet sympathy, telling her a few truths and many

lies--"instruments of darkness" win by such--wondering how she could

have lived with her bad husband so long as she had, when she could live

so much better--"_by the needle_"--without such a man. She does not

propose another now--of course not; she will bide her time for that,

when all her plots have ripened the seed she is now sowing.

They were soon at home; before Athalia had half done telling how fearful

she was of meeting Walter, and how she wanted to get out of town before

he discovered her; and then Mrs. Laylor told her how very private she

could be at her house--she would give her the third floor back room,

and send her meals up to her, and she need not see a single soul but

Nannette and herself, besides the chamber-maid--"none but your best

friends."

Why did Mrs. Laylor whisper Nannette, and why did she run in the

basement way, and why did they have to wait ten minutes for the door to

be opened? And where was Athalia's thick veil, with which she had

intended to hide her face so that no one would see her, for the

excitement of the day had flushed her cheeks, and made her fascinatingly

beautiful, and she had no desire to expose it to tempt the passion of

any one who might chance to meet her?

"Where can my veil be, I am sure I had it in my hand when I got in the

carriage?"

"I cannot see; perhaps Nannette has gathered it up with her shawl."

So she had. It had been slipped into the folds of it on purpose, for

Mrs. Laylor was already working her plans, and counting the hundred

dollars that she was going to charge some rich fool for bringing about a

meeting with "one of the handsomest women in the city--a dress-maker,

fresh from the country." In furtherance of this object of a wicked

woman, in pursuit of gain, she had sent Nannette into the house, to

station one of her dupes where he could see, without being seen, the

unveiled face of Athalia, as she passed in, and up the stairs. For this

purpose, the usually dark hall had been lighted, and the veil stolen.

"None but friends," there.

The victim that Nannette went to put in place, was a young clergyman,

like other men in the vigor of youth, possessed of like passions. He

would have sought a wife, but his salary would not support one in the

style that she would demand, or his congregation expect their pastor to

maintain; and so he sought indulgence where he had found out

accidentally that some of the members of his own church had sought it

for themselves.

He had slipped in, with handkerchief over his face, just before Mrs.

Laylor went out. She told him that she was going to the railroad depot

to meet a young woman from the country, a dress-maker, whom she had sent

for, to come and make a few dresses for her and "my daughter," as she

unblushingly, called Nannette, who, she said, "had been away from home,

at school."

The words were true, yet the speech was a lie, a wicked lie, made to

deceive one who had been unwary enough to put his finger in a trap. She

had been away from home, a home where she left a mother, and brothers,

and sisters. And she had been at school--a school where language and

manners are taught; but, oh! what language, and what ways, and manners.

It is a school which is computed to have thirty thousand teachers in

this city.

What strange inconsistencies our human nature is possessed of. This

Nannette had naturally a good heart. We saw that in the scene where Mrs.

Morgan discovers the depth of depravity to which one of those teachers

had dragged down her husband. Yet, no sooner is Athalia placed by

misfortune in a position to be subject to temptation, than she offers

her gratuitous services to Mrs. Laylor, to effect her complete ruin.

What for? Who can answer? I cannot, unless the fable of the fox that

lost his tail in a trap, will give a cue to the solution. I fear, that

we are too apt to wish others no better than ourselves. It must have

been some such motive that actuated Nannette: the little pecuniary

advantage offered by Mrs. Laylor for her assistance, does not seem to be

a sufficient motive for one female, though she herself has lost the

priceless jewel of female virtue, to wish to bring another of her sex

into that vortex which engulfs all who come within its maeelstrom power,

as certain as that upon the Norway coast. Be the motive what it may, she

had certainly lent herself this day, as a willing tool, to do a double

deed of wrong.

I cannot name the clergyman who was to be made--had been made--the

victim in this nefarious plot, because he is still living, and has paid

the penalty of ruined health for visiting such a house, and a still

greater penalty of a gnawing conscience for the sin, and the lies told

to cover it up.

As a _nom de plume_, I will call him, Otis, because it is the most

dissimilar to his own, of any one I can think of.

Otis had been tempted to visit this house, as I said before, by a

natural strong passion, but that would have been insufficient, had not a

sort of Paul Pry friend told him of the delinquency of one of his flock,

and urged him to watch him. He did so, saw him enter the house with a

woman, certainly not his wife, charged him afterwards, with a view to

his reformation, and was met with a plump denial of the character of

the place, and even threatened with exposure of his attempt to watch and

pry into other peoples' business. Goaded with such an accusation, he

retorted upon his informer, and he in his turn reiterated the charge,

and urged Otis to "call on a professional (that is pastoral) visit," and

satisfy himself.

This he did, and found the house most genteelly and richly furnished;

the owner, "a widow, living," she said, "upon the interest of money in

bank,"--she meant the interest of bankers' money--a very modest, genteel

lady, very much pleased to have him call, and begged him to repeat the

visit "some afternoon or evening when the young ladies, her nieces and

daughter, would be at home, and if he was fond of music, they would play

for him, and one of them could sing beautifully." She could sing the

"Mermaid's song." He was completely deceived. Who might not be by such a

siren? The truth is, that her penetrating eye had seen at a glance quite

down into his very secret thoughts, and that he possessed passions which

she could inflame and turn to account, and she laid all her plans to

that end. Although satisfied, after one or two visits, that all the

inmates of the house were correct, he had his suspicions aroused as to

those who visited them, for he could not help noticing the fact, that

while he was there one evening, there were no less than five calls,

apparently of couples, who were received in a dark hall, with whispered

words, and then went upstairs, and after awhile went out in the same

quiet way. Twice, he saw through the crack of the door that the ladies

were veiled with thick dark veils, such as we meet every day upon the

Broadway side-walk. But the most convincing thing of all, was an

incautious word spoken aloud by one of the visitors as Mrs. Laylor was

letting him out. He knew the voice. It was the man whose conduct had led

him first to this house. Then he was so well satisfied, that he told

Mrs. Laylor his suspicions, and she acknowledged that she did sometimes

let a room to a gentleman and lady, but to none except persons of the

highest respectability, such as himself, for instance. That was a cue.

He took it and fell into the snare. She agreed "for a consideration," to

introduce him to one of the most respectable ladies, upon the

understanding that she was to remain closely veiled,--as the whole

proceeding was to be veiled from the Argus eyes of the world.

The "respectable lady" was drawn from the same house to which we have

before had an introduction; in short, she was the same "lady" in whose

room Athalia saw her husband from Nannette's room. With Otis she played

the part of "clergyman's widow," and for that purpose always dressed in

deep mourning, just as her sisters in sin do now every day in the

fashionable promenades of this city; and she played it well, until one

night, after having taken one bottle extra between them, for he had not

yet learned that wine drinking was but little better than whiskey

drinking, "she let out on him," in such a manner that his eyes were

opened, and he determined to leave the house. But he had tasted sin, and

who that has, but well knows how much harder it is afterwards to resist

the temptation?

So he came back. What an excuse he made to conscience as he did

so!--That it was only to upbraid the woman for deceiving him. He

deceived himself. First, in trusting himself in a deceitful woman's

power; and, secondly, in supposing that after she had deceived him once,

she would not again. This last visit was upon the very night in which

Athalia was introduced into the house, and hence the lies to inflame his

mind, and the art made use of to give him a stolen glance of her face.

It is no wonder that the first man fell, when "tempted of a woman." It

is idle to talk of our power to withstand their seductive arts. Otis was

entrapped again. The sight of Athalia's beauty inflamed his already

wine-heated blood, and he readily offered Mrs. Laylor a hundred dollars

to bring about a successful negociation. This was just what she

intended--what she expected--she had baited her trap high, and the game

was already caught. And he was not the only one she intended to catch

with the same bait. She intended to use her as a profitable investment

upon all her "regular customers"--for all such houses boast of such--as

long as she could make the lie of "fresh from the country," pass as

current coin. She little thought, and cared less, how many lies she had

to contrive and tell Athalia, before she could accomplish her purpose.

It does seem as though, when a woman loses her own virtue, that she

imagines all her sex have lost or would lose theirs just as easy as

herself.

"I drag down," should be graven upon the brow of every one of her class.

Whether man or woman, whoever comes within their influence--and who does

not, since they are permitted to go forth at noonday through the

thoroughfares of this city, seeking whom they may devour, and all night

long they show their brazen faces in the streets, "picking up" poor

fools for victims, whom they drag down--true, they go willingly--to

their dens of destruction.

It does seem as though when a man loses his balance so far as to fall

into the influence of such a woman, that he is "ready to believe a lie

even unto his own damnation." How else could Walter Morgan--there are a

great many Walter Morgans--leave such a wife as Athalia for such a

Jezebel as he did? How else did such a man as Otis, whose business it

was to watch the fold, allow the wolf to enter and carry off the

shepherd? Why, after he had found out how much he had been cheated, did

he believe the lies of the cheat again? Who can answer? I cannot. I can

only say, that in this branch of intoxication, the only safe rule is

that of the teetotaller, "touch not, taste not, handle not;" and it must

be more rigidly applied in the one case than the other. A man may

possibly touch liquor and drink not. Can he play with a harlot and not

fall? Otis should have preached a sermon, not to his congregation, but

to his own conscience in his own closet, from this text:

"For a whore is a deep ditch: and a strange woman is a narrow

pit.

"She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the

transgressions among men."

She certainly had increased the transgressions in the case of Otis, and

she lay in wait for Athalia as a prey.

Otis would have sought an introduction immediately, for wine had

mastered reason; wine, that is made expressly for such houses, had

inflamed his blood.

This the master-piece of iniquity knew would never answer. But she

promised him that for the sum named, she would bring about the desired

interview.

"To-night?"

"Yes. At least she would try."

"To-night or never! To-night is the last night that I shall ever set

foot in your house. I have registered a vow in heaven to that, and I

will keep it."

So he did. He had good cause to remember that night.

Mrs. Laylor saw that he looked as though he intended to keep it, and as

he had been fool enough to tell her so, she at once determined to fool

him to her own profit. So she promised him that he should have his

utmost desire, and upon that she ordered up another bottle of wine,

urged him to drink and amuse himself with the young ladies, while she

went up and "smoothed the way."

There is but little need of smoothing the way that leads nearly every

young man, who visits such places, to destruction. But she had a way to

smooth. It was her last chance with this victim, and she determined on

profit and revenge.

In due time she came in, and reported favorably.

"The lady would see him, in consideration of his profession, upon one

condition--that he would not seek to learn her name, or anything about

her, and that he should not see her face."

What did he care for that, since he had already seen it, and it was

daguerreotyped upon his heated imagination, so that he would know her

whenever he should meet her afterwards in the street.

Let the curtain of night fall. The sun shone into an eastern window of

No. -- H----n street the next morning, while Otis still slept. Its

bright rays awakened him to the startling consciousness of having

over-slept himself after a night of debauch. How should he get away

without being seen? The thought troubled him sorely. But he soon

determined what he would do; he would steal the veil from the face of

the sleeping beauty to hide his own, and then slip out by the basement

door, perhaps unseen. What harm could it do to her, since he had seen

and knew the face so well?

He dressed himself hurriedly, then gently drew the veil away, with a

salvo to his conscience that he would not then see her face, he would

look the other way. His conscience would have been more easy afterwards

if he had kept that resolve. He could not. The glance at Athalia's

beauty the night before had maddened him, and he turned, as he was going

out of the door, to look back where she slept, and steal--"Thou shalt

not steal"--he had forgotten that--steal one more glance. He did, but

instead of the face of Athalia, he saw that of a common street-walker--a

young harridan--and he rushed from the room with the full weight of a

burning conscience for his folly, with a feeling of self-degradation at

being victimized a second time by the same deceitful woman; hating

himself and everybody else; dreading to meet any one he knew, and,

finally, encountering in the basement hall, striving to get out in the

same sly way, the very man whom he had first taken to task for visiting

this den of infamy. What a recognition! Neither could speak, so intense

was the thought in the mind of each that the other might ruin him by

simply revealing the truth. Strange that neither thought how little the

other would dare to speak, least it should be inquired, "How did you

know he was there? Where was you?"

Otis said afterwards to an acquaintance of mine, a physician, whom he

was obliged to consult in consequence of that sinful night, that he

could not conceive any agony more intensely painful in this life than

that which he endured the next Sabbath, when he arose in the pulpit and

looked down upon the congregation, but saw nothing, could see nothing,

but that one pair of eyes glaring upon him just as they did the morning

he met them in the hall of that house where he had been so disgraced.

"I little knew then," said he, "as I did afterwards, that he felt just

as bad as I did, for he told me that it seemed to him that I was about

to denounce him to the whole congregation. So intense had this feeling

become, that he was on the point of seizing his hat and rushing out when

the words burst from my lips, 'if thou knowest aught of thy brother's

failing, cover it up from the rude gaze of the world, for it can profit

them nothing to know of his faults.'

"'Go to him privately and speak kindly, and he will reform!' So he did,

to our mutual benefit."

This relieved the mind of Otis, but it did not save him from the sad

effect of a poisoned, neglected system, but it cured him from visiting

places where he was ashamed to show his face. It taught him that "the

way of the transgressor is hard." He had one more trial. He had not paid

Mrs. Laylor the hundred dollars promised while heated with wine, for he

felt that she was not entitled to it, and he had no such sum to spare.

Late one Saturday night he received a note from the lady, requesting

immediate payment, and threatening exposure in church the next day if he

failed to make it instanter. He had not so much money in the world, and

knew no way by which he could get it immediately. He was in an agony of

fear all the evening. The only man to whom he dared apply either for

money or advice, the man who was equally guilty, was out of town. What

should he do? He did what every Christian should do. He opened his

Bible, and the first words, that his eyes fell upon were, "ask and it

shall be given you."

He did ask, and ask earnestly, what shall I do? Before he had done

asking, the door bell rang and a letter marked "private--by express,"

was laid upon his table. A glance at the superscription told him it was

from the man he was so anxious to see.

He opened and read:

"MY DEAR FRIEND OTIS,

"I have had a sort of presentiment upon my mind that you were

about to be distressed for that hundred dollars, and as I am

well aware that you never would have been placed in jeopardy if

I had not first done wrong, I beg you to accept the enclosed

check for that amount.

"I need not say who it is from."

How strange, how opportune, how quick the answer to his asking had come

back. What a load it lifted off his mind. It is not the first load that

prayer, earnest, sincere prayer, has lifted. He was relieved in more

ways than one; he had repented of his folly, and had become a better and

a wiser man. Gold is refined of its adhering dross by fire. Otis still

lives, and every day he warns some one, not only of the folly and sin,

but the danger, of visiting that class of houses, if only from

curiosity. They are all traps for the unwary, and gulfs into which the

soul sinks blindfold down to perdition.

We have lost sight of Athalia. Let us return to her--she will need all

our sympathy, for she stands upon the very brink of a precipice, over

which though many have fallen, few ever returned.

Mrs. Laylor manifested the greatest sympathy for Athalia that one friend

could for another. She gave her the most private room in the house, and

assured her that she should be welcome to it just as long as she

pleased; "but of course," she said, "you will not remain a moment, after

you get your things from that wicked woman. Now what can I do to assist

you?"

This was said in such a kind, sympathizing manner, that a more

suspicious mind than hers might have been deceived; and she answered,

"Oh, you can do a good deal. I am afraid to go out, particularly to go

to that house, or that woman, and I want my keepsakes. I have got

seventy dollars, and I will give it freely if I can get them again."

She did not see the glisten of the eye, or the avaricious clutch of the

hand, as that miserly woman thought, "I will have that." She only heard

the soft tones of her voice as she said, "my dear Mrs. Morgan, I will

take it and see what I can do, but I am really afraid it is not

sufficient to induce her to part with them, as you say they are actually

worth more money."

"What shall I do then? I feel as though I could not part with them, and

in such a way too, that is worse than all. I would have sacrificed them

in a moment for that man, if he had been sick and suffering, for want of

food or medicine."

"Well, well, my dear friend, do not worry yourself. Remember that you

have friends, kind sympathizing friends, who will do more for you than

they would for themselves. I will go directly and see what can be done

if you will give me the money."

So she did, and by dint of threats, and coaxing, and promises to

Josephine, to try and get something out of "the poor fool's wife," for

her, she gave them up, and Mrs. Laylor, before night, had them safely

locked in her own iron chest.

"Why did she not give them to Athalia at once?"

Simply, because she intended to keep both money and things. So she told

Athalia, that Josephine had not yet returned from Coney Island, where

she knew she had gone with her husband, wearing her watch, passing for

his wife, spending her money, which he had collected for the making of

the dress that he had stolen away without her knowledge.

But she had come back; where was Walter?

Somewhere with his set. He had not yet dared to face his injured wife.

He intended to skulk home late at night. In the evening he went to see

his dear, sweet, amiable mistress. She was in about the same state of

mind after Mrs. Laylor left her, that a female tiger would be, on

arriving at her lair, after a little pleasure excursion, in which she

might have killed a couple of Indian children, but was driven off before

her appetite for blood was satisfied, and now found that some other

equally ferocious animal had despoiled her of her own young.

Walter and she had had "a good time" together, and parted lovingly only

a few hours before. How he was surprised as he entered her room

carelessly, to hear her tell him with a terrible oath--oaths are ten

times more terrible in woman's than in man's mouth--to leave the room or

she would take his life. At first, he thought she was in sport. One look

was enough to convince him of his error. Then he thought she was mad,

because he had entered without knocking, and found her engaged in

dressing for the evening debauch and usual scenes of dissipation, and

began to rally her on her Eve-like appearance.

That was more than some more amiable women can bear. No matter how ill

dressed or undressed, a woman does not like to be rallied on her

personal appearance.

It was more than such a human tiger could, or would bear. She darted at

him, and proceeded vigorously in the task of reducing him to the same

state, so far as his toilet was concerned, as herself. It did not take

long. First, she crushed his hat. His dress coat was fine, and it was

tender, for it was old, and she tore it into ribbons, in an instant. His

vest and shirt followed, and she made vigorous efforts at the remaining

garment, and then he broke and ran from the wild fury. She overtook him

at the top of the stairs, gave him a vigorous kick that sent him, naked

and insensible, down to the lower hall, where he was picked up by the

police, and carried to the station house; there he had his bruises

attended to, and there he would have got a passport to "the Island,"

only that he happened to be known, and when he told where he lived, one

of the officers said, that was the fact, that he knew his wife, and a

most excellent woman she was, and it would be a pity, on her account, to

send him up this time, and so he volunteered to go home with him, and

get some clothes and see what his wife wanted done with him. Walter

found his trunk and all that he could claim as his own--it was not much,

hardly enough for present necessity--where Athalia had left it, in the

next-door shop, and there he learned the facts about the sale, and his

wife going off in a carriage with two ladies, and a Negro driver; but he

did not learn why she had gone, he needed no words to tell him that, a

monitor within spoke louder than words.

"A guilty conscience needs no accuser."

What should he do? It is easy to say what a man should do. He should go

and find his wife, and fall down upon his knees; yes, bow his face into

the dust, pray for forgiveness, and promise reform. And he would be

forgiven. That is woman's nature. The Forgiver of all sins, is not more

forgiving.

"What did he do?"

That is just as easy said. He sold his last good shirt--one that his

wife had just made--to procure the means of getting drunk.

"What a pity that there should be any places where such a man could get

liquor; or that such places, if they do exist, should be kept by

wretches who will take the shirt off the back of the poor inebriate for

rum."

Yes, it is a pity. It is the cause of ruin of more men than all other

causes.

From this last fall Walter never recovered. He went down, step by step,

to the final termination of almost every young man who surrenders his

reason to such vile influences. You heard Reagan say what that end was.

Let his epitaph be,

"Requiescat in Pace."

With various excuses, Athalia was kept in daily expectation of

recovering her property, until continued disappointment made her heart

sick. In vain she begged for something to do. Everyday it was promised,

and every day the promise broken. She was kept from going out of the

house by continual tales about her husband watching it day after day,

and night after night. Of course this was all sham. He had been told

that she had gone out of town, and he believed it; he never got sober

enough to think of inquiring or caring whether she was dead or alive.

Finally, when Athalia could not be kept any longer upon such lying

promises, Mrs. Laylor told her "that she had finally got Josephine to

consent to give up the watch, and chain, and locket, and the Bible, for

a hundred dollars."

Where was the poor girl to get the other thirty. She knew it was more

than they were worth to anybody else, but she felt as though she would

give it freely if she had it. To add to her distress of mind, just at

this time she overheard a conversation in the next room between Mrs.

Laylor and one of the girls--it was got up on purpose--to this effect:

"To be sure she will pay for her board. Of course she cannot expect to

have the best room in the house ten weeks for nothing. But I shall only

charge her seven dollars a week."

"Seven dollars!" thought Athalia; "that takes the whole of my seventy

dollars, and my watch and Bible still remain in the hands of that

red-headed----Oh, dear! what shall I do?"

The two continued their conversation.

"But, Aunt, you have promised to give that seventy dollars, and thirty

more with it, to redeem her traps; how are you going to get seventy

dollars more? or if you take that for her board, and let the watch go,

what is she going to do in future? she has got no money, and don't work

any."

"Don't work any," thought she. "How can I work shut up here? I would

work, if I had it to do. I could have earned that sum before this time."

And again she said "Oh dear! what shall I do?"

It was just what they wanted she should say. Mrs. Laylor replied:

"Do! Why, she must do what other folks have to do. Frank Barkley is

dying to do for her, the fool that she is; he would give her any amount

of money, if she would be a little more agreeable when he calls. It was

a long time before I could persuade her to drink a glass of wine with

him. Some girls would have helped me to sell two or three bottles every

evening. I shall tell her to-day that she has got to do something. I

cannot keep anybody in the house this way much longer."

What a dose of gall and wormwood was this to poor Athalia! This was

boasted friendship. Forced by one specious pretence after another to

remain; purposely kept without work, that she might get in debt, for

that would put her in her creditor's power; and robbed of her

money--worse than robbed; and yet she was only served just as

innumerable poor girls have been served before, and will be again; it

was enough to make her cry out, "What shall I do?"

And then to be accused of being ungrateful. That was worse than all.

Then she thought that perhaps she had been. Mrs. Laylor had told her

several times how much wine some girls could induce gentlemen to buy,

and how much profit she made upon every bottle; and more than that, she

had hinted very strongly how much money such a handsome woman as

Athalia could make, if she was disposed to; and then she told a story

about a young clergyman that used to come there, and what a great fool

he was when he drank a little wine, and how she made a hundred dollars

out of the simpleton, and a great deal more; but she did not tell her

how she cheated him, nor how she had cheated Athalia out of her seventy

dollars, nor that Frank Barkley had paid her board, which she was now

trumping up an account for, so as to drive her to the seeming necessity

of selling her body and soul to escape from the tangled web which this

human spider was weaving around this poor weak fly.

In the course of the day, after this overheard conversation, Mrs. Laylor

came to tell Athalia "that she had succeeded at last in obtaining her

watch and Bible, by paying thirty dollars out of her own pocket,

although she did not know how in the world to spare it, but she supposed

Mrs. Morgan would repay it almost immediately."