University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.
THE PERISHING HEATHEN OF PHILADELPHIA.

—Texan MSS.

One night, not long ago, I stood in a crowded
church and saw three missionaries consecrated
for a great work. They were about to
cross the globe and preach the gospel to the
poor of Hindostan. To aid them in this work
some thousands of dollars were showered upon
the altar; nay, beautiful women tore the
bracelets from their wrists, the pearls from
their bosoms, and said,—

`Take these and carry the Gospel to the
perishing heathen.'

Within a stone's throw of that magnificent
church, at the same hour, there occurred a
scene of somewhat different kind. Behold
it.

Leaving the church we will enter this narrow
alley which branches from the main
street. In this narrow alley, the only light
that shines is from the dingy windows of the
Rum-shop. In this narrow alley, at least one
hundred houses or huts are huddled together,
some of frame, others of brick, all with their
windows stuffed with rags.

These houses yield a handsome rent to
their owners. You imagine that one family
of three or four persons occupies each
house?

You don't knew Philadelphia. That is evident.

Let me show you how a single room in
one of these huts—that one next the tenth
rum-shop—is occupied.

Through the narrow door, into this room
with low ceiling, black walls, and floor some
twelve feet square. What have we here? By
the light of a penny candle, stuck in a porter
bottle, you may behold the scene.

Close to the wall, side by side, their knees
drawn up to their chins, are crouched at least
twenty human beings, from the half-naked
girl of fifteen to the old man of eighty; here
the mother, with a baby on her breast, there
the negro, with his rum bottle, and along the
square formed by their huddled forms, you
see everything that is miserable in nakedness,
disease and rags.

These are the rum-shop keeper's lodgers,
but not all.

All day long they prowl the street, picking
rags, or begging cold victuals, or stealing a
morsel, and at night, they repose here for one
cent a head.

The porter bottle, which illuminates the
room, is held by a huge negro, who, with
rags upon his chest, is playing cards with a
white woman, who also crouches upon the
floor.

As the greasy pack passes from the white

hand to the black hand, you see a woman—
only a miserable rag upon her form—stretched
stiffly out in the centre of the room, her
bosom, and arms, and limbs disclosed by the
light.

That bosom is wasted, those arms shrunken
to the bone. As for the face, you cannot see
it, for her black hair, streaked with grey, falls
over it.

Does she sleep?

Lift the hair from her face and behold
those stony eyeballs. She sleeps—and sleeps
all the better that she has had no bread for
three days.

My good Missionary friend permit me to
take you by the bow of your white cravat,
and lead you from the crowded church into
this room—and don't think me impertinen
when I tell you, that the Lord Jesus will smile
more blessedly upon you if you sell one or
more of your handsomely bound Bibles and
buy a little bread, a little shelter for these
heathens of Philadelphia.

Excuse my freedom, friend; I have an odd
way of saying things, but as there is a God,
you need not go all the way to Hindostan to
find perishing Christians.

The breath left her body an hour ago. She
is cold now.

The door opens; a boy, half-naked—for
his only dress consists of trowsers that reach
to the knee, and a check shirt with one sleeve
— a boy comes forward to the light. You see
his freckled face, concealed by a mass of
matted brown hair, from beneath whose uneven
ends a pair of bright eyes gleam with
steady lustre.

He may be twelve years old, and he may
be fifteen; but in sober truth you cannot
guess his age from his face, for its lines are
sharpened into premature manhood, by a
course of severe study.

Poverty and starvation are great thinkers.

`Mother!'

He kneels beside the dead woman, and
places his lips to her ears,—

`Mother, come! I have that which will
buy us bread.'

She does not answer him—he shakes her
gently by the arm—feels that it is cold.

`Mother!' arose the shriek of that poor
wretch's agony. `You are so cold—so hungry—you
can't be dead? Come—quick I
say.' He whispered the last words—`I have
money, mother; come!'

The gambling negro turned from his
game,—

`Look yer, young gemmen, ef you don't
stop yer dam noise, I'll break yer dam
jaw!'

The boy did not disturb the negro any
more. He felt his mother's hands and bosom
and knew that she was dead, and then went
out into the alley and leaned his face against
the wall, and his tears fell without a sound.

She was the only thing that cared for him
in the world; she was dead. The little boy
looked up to the misty sky and along the alley,
and wondered where he should go now?
The watchman from the neighboring street
yelled,—`Two o'clock, and a cloudy mor'n,'
and a dead silence hung over the slumbering
city. Where could he go, that motherless
wretch?

Approaching the light which fell from the
rum shop window, over the gutter, the boy
drew from his rags a pocket book of dark morocco,
which he opened, and spread forth the
soft silken notes in his dirty hands.

`Money—it must be money—and I can't
read—mother could have read 'em. Mother!'

His tears fell afresh, and he was turning
from the light when a rude hand pinned him
by the shoulder:

`Come, my larkey; I'll take care of that
money for you. O, your a precious one—
ain't you! I say, Charley, give us the
`barkers;' we'll fix this lively youth so that
Judge Cant 'll be pleased to see him. A very

fine judge is Judge Cant; though he makes
temperance speeches on the bench, he can
take quite as big a brand-and-water as any
of us.'

The boy was surrounded by some half
dozen men, with red faces, well-developed
noses and flashy guard-chains.

They were dragging him along the alley,
with some force and a few kicks, when a
figure advanced from the shadows and confronted
the party.

He had evidently been attracted from the
main street by the cries of the child.

`Hello! It's the gentleman that was robbed.
Well, sir, you see we've got him; we
follered him up, watched him and found the
property on his person.'

`Give me the pocket book,' said Juan, as
he gazed steadily in the face of the police
officer. `Here is your reward—one thousand
dollars. Now, what will you do with this
poor boy?'

`O, as for him, Judge Cant 'ill fix him.—
Nothin' pleases Judge Cant so much as to
get hold of a young shaver. Oh my! doesn't
he give 'em fits!'

Juan, or John of Prairie Eden, as you
please, drew near the scared and sobbing
child, and swept back the matted hair from
his forehead.

`Have you a name, my little fellow?'

`Never had a name. The boys calls me
Young Rags, an' my father's gone away, an'
my mother's dead, an' them men have been
a kickin of me.'

Blurting his many sorrows in a breath, he
rubbed his fists in his eyes, and sobbed as
though his heart had broken.

`If you want to know anything about him,'
said the Police officer with the reddest nose,
`I kin tell you, for I've had my eye upon his
mother and father for this five years past.—
His father 'listed this spring in the Navy and
haint been heered on since. He was a poor
devil enough, but once was rayther respectable,
that is afore he first left the city, some
years back, with the runaway Bank Director.
You see McGregor was once this Bank Director's
clark—'

`McGregor!'

John started as he echoed the word.

`Y-a-s, Ewen McGregor.'

`Ewen McGregor!' John whispered as he
took the boy by the hand. `Prove this to me,
and I'll make your information worth money
to you.'

His voice was tremulous; he laid his hands
on the police officer's arm.

`Prove it!—Why we all know it. You see
McGregor went away to Texas, then jined
the Mexican army, and last winter came back
to town a poor, miserable devil, without one
cent to rub against another. He found his
wife, whom he'd deserted years before, in a
`bad place'—you take, eh?—an jined the
American Navy, an' hai'nt been heerd on
since.'

`That wife?'

`About an hour ago, when we first set our
watch in the alley to catch this shaver, we
found her dead in yonder hole. Guess she
atn't got alive sence.—ha, ha!'

`Come! show me where your mother lies
dead.'

The ragged boy looked up into those large
dark eyes, saw them filled with tears, and
took the stranger's hand.

`Come, I'll show you. Ye see I was hungry
and mother was cold—'

But John of Prairie Eden did not wait for
the boy to finish his incoherent ejaculations.

The police officers with some, wonder and
a few extra-judicial oaths, beheld that tall
stranger, disappear in the shadows, led by
the child to the dark hut where lay his mother's
corse.

Into the hut, where the negro holds the
light, and thumbs the greasy cards.

John bent down, lifted the black hair,
sprinkled with grey, beheld the wasted face
and stony eyes.

Years before he had known her, so young

and beautiful. Even amid the wreck made
by starvation and disease, he knew her, and
traced the outlines of what she had been in
the withered thing which lay before him stiff
and cold.

`You see, we hadn't any bread;' the boy
whimpered. `That is, mother hadn't; for
what she could git she give me; an' I watched
by the theatre, an'—'

John took the little outcast by the hand:

`Come home with me. While I have one
crust left you shall never want.'