One of the places which they point out on Ship Street is the Italian
fruit-shop on the corner of Perry Court, before the door of which, six
years ago, Guiseppe Cavagnaro, bursting suddenly forth in pursuit of
Martin Lavezzo, stabbed him in the back, upon the sidewalk. "All two"
of them were to blame, so the witnesses said; but Cavagnaro went to
prison for fifteen years. That was the same length of time, as it
happened, that the feud had lasted.
Nearly opposite is Sarah Ward's New Albion dance-hall. It opens directly
from the street There is an orchestra of three pieces, one of which
plays in tune. That calm and collected woman whom you may see rocking in
the window, or sitting behind the bar, sewing or knitting, is not a city
missionary, come to instruct the women about her; it is Sarah Ward,
the proprietress. She knows the Bible from end to end. She was a
Sunday-school teacher once; she had a class of girls; she spoke in
prayer-meetings; she had a framed Scripture motto in her chamber, and
she took the Teachers' Lesson Quarterly; she visited the sick; she
prayed in secret for her scholars' conversion. How she came to change
her views of life nobody knows,--that is to say, not everybody knows.
And still she is honest. It is her pride that sailors are not drugged
and robbed in the New Albion.
A few doors below, and on the same side of the street, is the dance-hall
that was Bose King's-. It is here that pleasure takes on its most sordid
aspect. If you wish to see how low a white woman can fall, how coarse
and offensive a negro man can be, you will come here. There is an
inscription on the bar, in conspicuous letters,--"Welcome Home."
By day it is comparatively still in Ship Street. Women with soulless
faces loll stolidly in the open ground-floor windows. There are few
customers in the bar-rooms; here and there two or three idlers shake for
drinks. Policemen stroll listlessly about, and have little to do. But
at nightfall there is a change; the scrape of fiddles, the stamp of
boot-heels, is heard from the dance-halls. Oaths and boisterous laughter
everywhere strike the ear. Children, half-clad, run loose at eleven
o'clock. Two policemen at a corner interrogate a young man who is hot
and excited and has no hat. He admits that he saw three men run from the
alley-way and saw the sailor come staggering out after them, but he does
not know who the men were. The policemen "take him in," on suspicion.
It is here that the Day-Star Mission has planted itself. Its white flag
floats close by the spot where Martin Lavezzo fell, with the long knife
between his shoulder-blades. Its sign of welcome is in close rivalry
with the harsh strains from Sarah Ward's and the lighted stairway to
Bose King's saloon. It stands here, isolated and strange, an unbidden
guest. It is a protest, a reproof, a challenge, an uplifted finger.
But while, to a casual glance, the Day-Star Mission is all out of place,
it has, nevertheless, its following. On Monday and Thursday afternoons a
troop of black-eyed, jet-haired Portuguese women, half of whom are
named Mary Jesus, flock in to a sewing-school. On Tuesdays and Fridays
American, Scotch, and Irish women, from the tenement-houses of the
quarter, fill the settees, to learn the use of the needle, to enjoy
a little peace, and to hear reading and singing; and occasionally the
general public of the vicinity are invited to an entertainment.
It was a February afternoon; at the Mission building the board were in
monthly session. The meeting had been a spirited one. A proposition
to amend the third line of the fourth by-law, entitled "Decorum in
the Hall," by inserting the word "smoking," had been debated and had
prevailed. A proposition to buy a new mangle for the laundry had been
defeated, it having been humorously suggested that the women could
mangle each other. Other matters of interest had been considered.
Finally, as the hour for adjournment drew near, a proposition was
brought forth, appropriate to the season. Saint Patrick's Day was
approaching. It was to many a day of temptation, particularly in the
evening. Would it not be a good plan to hold out the helping hand,
in the form of a Saint Patrick's Day festival, with an address, for
example, upon Saint Patrick's life, with Irish songs and Irish readings?
Such an entertainment would draw; it would keep a good many people out
of the saloons. Such was the suggestion.
The proposition excited no little interest. Ladies who had begun to put
on their wraps sat down again. To one of the board, a clergyman, who had
lately been lecturing on "Popery the People's Peril," the proposition
was startling. It looked toward the breaking down of all barriers; it
gave Romanism an outright recognition. Another member, a produce-man,
understood,--in fact he had read in his denominational weekly,--that
Saint Patrick could be demonstrated to have been a Protestant, and
he suggested that that fact might be "brought out." Others viewed
the matter in that humorous light in which this festival day commonly
strikes the American mind.
The motion prevailed. Even the anti-papistic clergyman was comforted,
apparently, at last, for he was heard to whisper jocosely to his
left-hand neighbor: "Saint Patrick's Day in the Morning!"
A committee, with the produce-man at the head, was appointed to select a
speaker, and to provide music and reading. It was suggested that perhaps
Mr. Wakeby and Mrs. Wilson-Smith would volunteer, if urged,--their
previous charities in this direction had made them famous in the
neighborhood. Mr. Wakeby to read from "Handy Andy;" Mrs. Wilson-Smith to
sing "Kathleen Mavourneen,"--there would not be standing-room!
So finally unanimity prevailed, and with unanimity, enthusiasm.
The committee met, and the details were settled. The chairman quietly
reserved to himself, by implication, the choice of a speaker. He knew
that it would be an audience hard to hold. The occasion demanded a man
of peculiar gifts. Such a man, he said to himself, he knew.