Hot corn: Life Scenes in New York Illustrated Part 32

"Well, some twenty-five years, I suppose. You have a short way of turning a corner. Was I talking anything about the West?"

"No. Twenty-five years. This city has changed some in that time, and you have got behind the times. You don't know as much as this little girl about this matter. Ask her."

"How is it little girl--what did you tell me was your name?"

"Stella, sir, Stella May."

"Well then Stella, what is to hinder this Mrs. Morgan from coming away if she wishes?"

"Because she is in debt, sir."

"Debt, sir, debt! do private citizens imprison their fellows for debt?

Are women compelled to live in houses of prost.i.tution in this city, a city where the Bible is read and gospel preached, against their will?

Preposterous, I will not believe it."

"Nevertheless it is gospel truth, as much as the Bible itself. The keepers of such houses sometimes inveigle innocent young girls into their dens, board and clothe them, and get them in debt, and in fact make them slaves, as sure as those who are bought and sold in southern cities. They cannot leave unless they leave naked, with the mark of their owner branded, not upon the surface of their bodies, but burnt into the inmost recesses of the mind.

"Sometimes those who go there voluntarily, repent afterwards most bitterly, most gladly would leave, but the door is closed against them, they are shut out of the world by the mark upon them, and shut in by their creditor mistress, or kept in such a state of intoxication that they have no time to redeem themselves from their life of slavery.

"From this little girl's account I venture to say that this woman is some one of the thousands of poor seamstresses, who st.i.tch and starve in this city, who perhaps in very despair after a long struggle to live with a drunken husband, has been tempted into one of these places, and is now repenting grievously, and would gladly get away, but has not the means to do so; for she lacks a small sum to pay her greedy landlady some iniquitous charge, and a few dollars and some friend to a.s.sist her in her immediate necessities. Thus she will live a short life of excitement, and go friendless and unwept to an early grave."

"She shall not. She shall not. I have money, useless, idle, more than I shall ever want, and I have no friends. I will be her friend, I will rescue her, and she shall be mine."

Stella, the little pedler, had stood as though transfixed, during all this time, drinking in every word, until she found that her friend, poor Mrs. Morgan, would have some one to care for her, some one to love her as she loved her, one who had money, "more money than he wanted," to a.s.sist her, and then she grew as enthusiastic as Mr. Lovetree. She caught him by the hand, and as the tears ran down her cheeks, tears of joy, blessed tears, that drop like honey upon the lips, sending sweetness through every channel of sensation in the whole system, she said, "Will you, will you give her money to get out of that place? Will you go and see her? Will you love her? Oh I am so happy! I must run home and tell my mother, and that will make her happy too. Now I am so glad I told you all about it."

"And you will do it," said she, looking up in his face so earnestly, "yes, I know you will, you don't look like one of those kind of folks who say one thing and mean another."

Yes he would do it, I knew that; naturally enthusiastic, though not easily carried away by sudden flaws of side winds, when he once said, "I will do it," it was half done.

"Now I will run home and tell mother, for I want her to be as happy as me. Good night."

"Stop, stop a moment, you have not told us where the poor lady is that you wish us to go and see, nor what her name is."

"Oh dear, I forgot that. Yes I told you, Mrs. Morgan, but you want her whole name; well that is such a pretty name; I love pretty names; have you a card, I will write it for you."

"What, can you write?"

"Oh yes, sir, before we got so poor, I used to go to school. I would like to go now, but I have no time. You ought to see my mother write; she can write so pretty."

I saw what was working in the benevolent old gentleman's face, while Stella was writing. He had heard her say, "I would like to go to school now," and he was resolving in his mind, "Why not? Why should I not send her there? I have none of my own to send." It was a good resolve.

"There, that is it. 'Mrs. Athalia Morgan, at Mrs. Laylor's in H----n street.' I don't recollect the number, but you can find it easy enough; mother says it does seem as though the evil one always stood ready to lead folks to such houses. But you had better inquire for Lucy Smith.

They don't know her by any other name there. Shall I go now? Good night.

I am so anxious to tell mother."

"Athalia!--Athalia!" said my friend, as he spelt over the name on the card. "Athalia! oh, pshaw! that is nonsense, yet it might be--why not? I say, my little girl, you knew her before she was married. What was her name then?"

"And what is that, 'why not,' and what about that name? The little girl is well on her way home, by this time, if she kept on at the speed she went down stairs. Her earnestness makes me begin to feel a good deal interested in that woman."

"Nothing, only a thought, a mere pa.s.sing thought, and yet I cannot shake it off. It is rather an unusual name. I had a brother--yes, I had a brother, whether I have or not now, I cannot tell; yet he was not exactly a brother either, though we called the same woman mother, and the same man father, and whether he is living now or not I cannot say, but think not. He did very badly, drank up all his property, and took the usual course, and I suppose he is dead, and his wife too, and then his children are orphans, and why not this be one of them; it is the same name. Athalia--it is not a common name; if it had been I should not remember it, for I never saw her but once, then a little girl not as big as this one just here. I wish she had not run away so soon, before I could ask her a single question. What shall I do now?"

"Go and ask Athalia herself."

"What! to-night? It is now ten o'clock, time all respectable citizens were in bed. It is too late."

"No, it is never too late to begin to do good. It is just the hour that the lives of the inmates of such houses, as we propose to visit, begin.

From this till one or two o'clock, drinking, carousing, swearing, and all sorts of revelry and debauchery, and then----it is well that night has curtains. Now this house where we are to go, however, I take, from its location, to be one of a different character, one that maintains a show of respectability, yet is one of the most dangerous, for its victims are drawn from among a cla.s.s just as good as Stella has described Mrs. Morgan."

"You think, then, that we may go there safely, at this hour of the night?"

"As safely, as respects our persons, as to church. As dangerously, as respects our morals, as the poor weak bird fluttering within the charmed circle of the fascinating serpent."

"As to that I fear nothing."

"So has said many a one. I say,

'He must have a long spoon that must eat with the devil,'

or he will soon come to such familiarity that he will eat freely out of the same dish. No man is proof against the fascinations of a designing woman. But as we go doubly armed, for our cause is just, let us go, go at once, for I see you are excited about that name. It would be strange, if it should prove to be your niece."

"Yes and stranger still, the way that we have been brought together, and to a knowledge of her, through our mutual sympathy for this little pedler girl, such an one as we may see every hour in the streets, without exciting a pa.s.sing thought. What a mysterious power governs all our actions, and how we are influenced and turned aside from the path we had marked out, by the most trivial circ.u.mstances. I had seen this little girl come in here and offer her little wares a score of times, without paying any attention to her or her movements, except to wonder how any mother could trust such a child, bright, good-looking, free spoken, forward--that is, precocious--among so many fops and libertines, who would take advantage of her some day, and by deceit and money work her ruin. Last night I had put on my gloves and hat, and was just walking out as she came in with her 'Please to buy this, sir,' and why I did not go out I cannot tell, but some unaccountable influence turned me back, and I picked up a paper and sat apparently absorbed in its contents, while my ear was open and mind awake to every word and movement of the libertine rascal who made a pretence of buying liberally, to induce her to go up to his room to get the pay. I followed, watched him to his room, heard the key turn in the lock, heard all his conversation, his vile proposals, and her virtuous rejection, with an energy, 'that she had rather starve and see her mother dead;'

and then I heard a struggle and I knew the villain was using his brutal strength upon a weak girl, and then I burst the door, and then--you know the rest."

"Why did you not strike the villain dead at your feet?"

"That is savage nature."

"Why not arrest and punish him, then, for his attempt at rape?"

"That is civilized nature."

"What then did you do?"

"I forgave him, and bade him repent, and ask G.o.d to forgive him, as I did."

"Lovetree, give me your hand, I give you my heart; I stand rebuked. I understand you now, that was Christian nature. Let us go."

Reader, walk with us. We threaded our way along the crowded side-walk, pa.s.sing or meeting, between the Astor House and Ca.n.a.l street, not less than fifty girls; some of them not over twelve years old, many about fourteen or fifteen, some of them superbly beautiful, naturally or artificially, and all, such as the spirit, hovering over the poor s.h.i.+pwrecked mariner upon the stormy ocean, cries wildly to, as they sink, down, down, to death, "lost, lost, lost!"

"Why, why, tell me why they are permitted to roam through the streets, plying their seductive arts? Where are your police? Where your city Fathers?--guardians of the morals of strangers and citizens! How can anything, male or female, remain pure in such an atmosphere of impurity?

Where are your laws? laws of love that lift up the fallen. Where all your high-paid, well-fed city guardians, who should watch the city youth, to keep them from becoming impure?"

Echo gave the answer, and it reverberated back and forth from granite wall to freestone, from marble front to red-burnt bricks, from dark cellar to gas-lighted hall, from low dens of death to high rooms of wealth and fas.h.i.+on, from law makers to law breakers; echo came back with that one word, "Impure, impure, impure."

How the throng go thoughtlessly onward. Do they ever think--think what a sirocco blast from the valley of the Upas tree, is sweeping over this city? Do mothers ever inquire, ever think whether it is possible for their sons to escape the contagion of such company as they keep in the great evening promenade of this mighty Babylon? Have New York mothers no feeling of fear for their sons? or has "the pestilence that walketh in darkness," obtained such strength that this is overcome? or has the plague spot grown so familiar to their eyes that they no longer seek to wash it out? If they have given up their sons, if they have surrendered the great street to the almost exclusive occupancy, at night, of painted harlots; have they also given up their daughters, surrendered them to the wiles of the seducer? do they let them go out without fear, even in company with their male friends, to be jostled upon the side-walks by midnight ramblers, and seated at the same table, at some of the great "saloons," side by side with those who win to kill, whose trade is death, whose life is gilded misery, though enticing as the siren's song?

Have they forgotten that we are all creatures of surrounding circ.u.mstances, subject to like influences, and liable to the same disease as those who breathe the same atmosphere, and if that is impure, those who breathe it may become so?

Even now, while I write, the "New York Daily Tribune," gives this "Item"