Part 25 (1/2)
”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 prost.i.tute 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 trespa.s.s upon another, he would get a wet cloth over his mouth some night when he was asleep, and n.o.body 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.”