Part 4 (1/2)
But it proved a harder task than I had thought. None of the widows I knew had six children. The charitable societies had no family that fitted my friend's case. But in time I found people who knew about Mrs. Josefy. The children were right--so many boys and so many girls; what they told me of the mother made me want to know more. I went over to East Eleventh Street at once. On the way the feeling grew upon me that I had found my friend's Christmas present--I forgot to say that it was on Christmas Eve--and when I saw them and gathered something of the fight that splendid little woman had waged for her brood those eight long years, I knew that my search was over. When we had set up a Christmas tree together, to the wild delight of the children, and I had ordered a good dinner from a neighboring restaurant on my friend's account, I hastened back to tell him of my good luck and his. I knew he was late at the office with his mail.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”WHEN WE HAD SET UP A CHRISTMAS TREE TOGETHER, TO THE WILD DELIGHT OF THE CHILDREN.”]
Half-way across town it came to me with a sense of shock that I had forgotten something. Mrs. Josefy had told me that she scrubbed in a public building, but where I had not asked. Perhaps it would not have seemed important to you. It did to me, and when I had gone all the way back and she answered my question, I knew why. Where do you suppose she scrubbed? In the Presbyterian Building! Under his own roof was the neighbor he sought. Almost they touched elbows, yet were they farther apart than the poles. Were, but no longer to be. The very next day brought my friend and his wife in from their Jersey home to East Eleventh Street.
Long years after I found this entry on the register, under date January 20, 1899:
”Mrs. Josefy states that she never had such a happy Christmas since she came to this country. The children were all so happy, and every one had been so kind to them.”
It was the beginning of better days for the Josefy family. Weary stretches of hard road there were ahead yet, but they were no longer lonesome. The ladies' committee that had once so hotly blamed her were her friends to the last woman, for she had taught them with her splendid pluck what it should mean to be a mother of Americans. They did not offer to carry her then any more than before, but they went alongside with words of neighborly cheer and saw her win over every obstacle. Two years later finds her still working in the Presbyterian Building earning sixteen dollars a month and leaving her home at five in the morning. Her oldest boy is making four dollars and a half a week, and one of the girls is learning dressmaking. The others are all in school. One may be sure without asking that they are not laggards there. When the youngest, at twelve, is wanted by her friends of the mission board to ”live out” with them, the mother refuses to let her go, at the risk of displeasing her benefactors. The child must go to school and learn a trade. Three years more, and all but the youngest are employed. Mrs. Josefy has had a long illness, but she reports that she can help herself. They are now paying fourteen dollars a month rent. On April 6, 1904, the last entry but one is made on the register: the family is on dry ground and the ”case is closed.”
The last but one. That one was added after a gap of eight years when I made inquiries for the Josefys the other day. Eight years is a long time in the Charities Buildings with a heavy burden of human woe and failure.
Perhaps for that very reason they had not forgotten Mrs. Josefy, but they had lost trace of her. She had left her old home in Eleventh Street, and all that was known was that she was somewhere up near Fort Was.h.i.+ngton. I asked that they find her for me, and a week later I read this entry in the register, where, let us hope, the case of the Josefys is now closed for all time:
”The Josefys live now at No. -- West One Hundred and Eighty --st Street in a handsome flat of six sunny rooms. The oldest son, who is a cas.h.i.+er in a broker's office on a salary of $35 a week, is the head of the family. His brother earns $20 a week in a downtown business. Two of the daughters are happily married; another is a stenographer. The youngest, the baby of the dark days in the East Side tenement, was graduated from school last year and is ready to join the army of workers. The mother begins to feel her years, but is happy with her children.”
Some Christmas Eve I will go up and see them and take my friend from the Presbyterian Building along.
This is the story of a poor woman, daughter of a proud and chivalrous people, whose sons have helped make great fortunes grow in our land and have received scant pay and scantier justice in return, and of whom it is the custom of some Americans to speak with contempt as ”Huns.”
WHAT THE SNOWFLAKE TOLD
The first snowflake was wafted in upon the north wind to-day. I stood in my study door and watched it fall and disappear; but I knew that many would come after and hide my garden from sight ere long. What will the winter bring us? When they wake once more, the flowers that now sleep snugly under their blanket of dead leaves, what shall we have to tell?
The postman has just brought me a letter, and with it lying open before me, my thoughts wandered back to ”the hard winter” of a half-score seasons ago which none of us has forgotten, when women and children starved in cold garrets while men roamed gaunt and hollow-eyed vainly seeking work.
I saw the poor tenement in Rivington Street where a cobbler and his boy were fighting starvation all alone save for an occasional visit from one of Miss Wald's nurses who kept a watchful eye on them as on so many another tottering near the edge in that perilous time, ready with the lift that brought back hope when all things seemed at an end. One day she found a stranger in the flat, a man with close-cropped hair and a hard look that told their own story. The cobbler eyed her uneasily, and, when she went, followed her out and made excuses. Yes! he was just out of prison and had come to him for shelter. He used to know him in other days, and Jim was not--
She interrupted him and shook her head. Was it good for the boy to have that kind of a man in the house?
The cobbler looked at her thoughtfully and touched her arm gently.
”This,” he said, ”ain't no winter to let a feller from Sing Sing be on the street.”
The letter the postman brought made me see all this and more in the snowflake that fell and melted in my garden. It came from a friend in the far West, a gentle, high-bred lady, and told me this story: Her sister, who devotes her life to helping the neighbor, had just been on a visit to her home. One day my friend noticed her wearing an odd knitted shawl, and spoke of it.
”Yes,” said she, ”that is the shawl the cook gave me.”
”The cook?” with lifted eyebrows, I suppose. And then she heard how.
One day, going through the kitchen of the inst.i.tution where she teaches, she had seen the cook in tears and inquired the cause. The poor woman sobbed out that her daughter had come home to die. The doctors had said that she might live perhaps ten days, no longer, and early and late she cried for her mother to be with her. But she had vainly tried every way to get a cook to take her place--there was none, and her child was dying in the hospital.
”And I told her to go to her right away, I would see to that; that was all,” concluded my friend's sister; ”and she gave me this shawl when she came back, and I took it, of course. She had worked it for the daughter that died.”
But it was not all. For during ten days of sweltering July heat that gentle, delicate woman herself superintended the kitchen, did the cooking, and took the place of the mother who was soothing her dying child's brow, and no one knew it. Not here, that is. No doubt it is known, with a hundred such daily happenings that make the real story of human life, where that record is kept and cherished.