Part 26 (1/2)

”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, d.a.m.n 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, friends.h.i.+p, 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, fas.h.i.+on, luxury, and extravagance of this great city, from the Park and its marble halls of justice, you will pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s the Broadway Theatre before you reach the next corner, with its surroundings of fas.h.i.+onable ”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 amus.e.m.e.nts. Do not go into that place of ”fas.h.i.+onable 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 pa.s.s 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, crus.h.i.+ng 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.”