Part 9 (1/2)
”So far as I can recollect, it was always sun-s.h.i.+ny when we visited old Rosie, though of course it must have rained sometimes. She had a single room in a tiny little cottage squeezed behind the rest. A narrow strip led to the door, and there was no room for any window in front, except the one right above the door, peering out from under the heavy thatch.
There is no one to answer if we knock, so we push our fingers through the door and lift the wooden latch. My father, who goes with us almost every Sunday, has to stoop his head in climbing the narrow stair, and of course the little lad of six and his sisters stoop their heads too; there are four of the girls and one of me. Rosie welcomes us with her beaming smile. She is sitting up in bed, as she has done for eleven long years. She is a hundred and five years old, and her hair is snowy white, yet there is not a wrinkle on her brow, and her cheeks have the rosy brightness from which she gets the familiar name. All her relations are gone, and she is now a pauper with only two or three s.h.i.+llings a week from the parish.
”We might call her poor and lonely and bedridden, yet she is brimful of happiness. The Bible is constantly at her hand, and she is generally thanking G.o.d for all His mercies. She has lived in the light and love of the Saviour since she was eleven years old; and she has gone so long and so far in the good way, that now it is as if she were sitting just outside the golden gates, crowned with radiant beauty and clothed with white raiment, waiting until her Lord shall bid her enter.
”At dear old Rosie's bed we used to have a little service; first a chapter read from the Bible, then a hymn--'Rock of Ages' was her favorite, sung to 'Rousseau's Dream.' When the prayer was over, old Rosie would lay her thin hand on the little lad's curly head, and say as she turned her face upward, 'O Lord, bless the little lad! Bless him and make him a preacher.' I didn't like that prayer of hers, and I used to say to myself, 'I will never be a preacher; I will be a doctor, and gallop about the country visiting people.' But one Sunday, after the service and her little prayer, she said 'good-by' to us all. 'You won't see me any more; so it must be good-by for a long time now, until we meet at home.' We wondered what she meant. Two days after, she was carried home by G.o.d's angels from her lonely room. My little heart was like to break at the thought of never seeing her again; and I went out by myself to the garden and prayed, 'Please G.o.d, I don't care so much, after all, if I become a preacher, if it will make dear Rosie any happier.'”
It would be better for us that a millstone were hanged about our necks, and we were cast into the depths of the sea, than that we should be thoughtless or indifferent of one of G.o.d's poor, like old Rosie.
Well, you ask, how can it be made better? My answer is that there ought to be a radical change in the Board of Control of Public Inst.i.tutions.
I do not make any personal fight on the three men now in control. I make war on the whole system. As it is now, there are, in and about Boston, ten public inst.i.tutions, occupied by thousands of men and women and children, carried on at an expense of nearly six hundred thousand dollars, entirely under the control of three commissioners. This is not wise. There ought to be a large advisory board made up of distinguished citizens. This should be composed of women as well as men. It is certainly a very short-sighted and thoughtless arrangement that, although there are in these inst.i.tutions several hundred women and children, there is no woman who has any authorized interest in them.
There is every reason why women should be on the Boards of Control of Public Inst.i.tutions. The editor of the New York _Nation_ says: ”Whatever improvement there has been in the condition of Bellevue Hospital, for example, and of the hospitals of Blackwell's and Hart's Islands, during the past twenty years--and it is very great--has, as a rule, been due to women's initiative and labors.”
The fact is, that everything that concerns health, education, and good morals occupies the minds of women more than it does the minds of most of their husbands and fathers; and in every department of munic.i.p.al administration, where the conditions of the streets, of the sewers, of the hospitals and almshouses, and of the police, are in question, women have an equal interest with men, and in order to the public well-being and safety, ought to have an equal voice. I am sure that an advisory board of leading citizens, on which were three or four level-headed, humane women, would work the revolution that is needed in the treatment of Boston's paupers. Do not put this question aside. This is Boston's question, and you are a part of Boston. As some one sang in the Boston _Transcript_ not long ago:--
”Lazarus lies at your gate!
O proud and prosperous city, How long will you let him wait?
Listen and look; have pity.
Dives, oh, cannot you hear, For the music and dance of your high land, The moaning of misery drear That comes from the desolate island?
Finest of linen you wear; Comrades in luxury you cherish, Sumptuous daily you fare.
What of your neighbors who perish?
When you would heighten your cheer By a contrast that's very dramatic, Fancy what scenes may appear In a certain dim hospital attic.
Swarming and sweltering, and scant Of air,--foul to soul as to senses,-- Where he that is guilty of Want Meets a doom fit for graver offences.
Worn-out, the pauper nurse sleeps; The sufferer, forsaken, is crying With no one to moisten his lips,-- No one to mark that he's dying.
Who should hear the _catch_ in his breath 'Mid the coughs, curses, ravings, resounding Through the ward o'er the bed of his death, From the close-crowded pallets surrounding?
And picture the scenes, to come Perhaps, of another sorrow Nearer your stately home,-- That you will not have to borrow;
When hushed is all merry din, And your smiling guests have vanished; When your flowers come blooming in, To be glanced at once and banished;
When vain are all the crafts That Mammon serve, and never Tour costliest, coolest draughts Can quench the fire of your fever;
When your street is red with tan, And your oft-pulled door-bell m.u.f.fled, That the peace of a dying man By no faintest sound be ruffled;
When love, to give you rest, Doth toil with soothings fruitless; And skill has done its best, And the town's best skill is bootless;
When the chaises leave the place, And the helpless, poor patrician Lies looking up in the face Of only the Great Physician,--
G.o.d grant it with joy may be That you hear, 'What you did toward others Ye have done it unto Me, In the least of those My brothers!'
Lazarus lies at your gate; Our kindly dear old city, Let him no longer wait; Open the doors of your pity!”