University of Virginia Library

There 's a tenement-house in Mulberry Street,
Where thieves, and beggars, and loafers meet,—
A house whose face wears a leprous taint
Of mouldy plaster and peeling paint.
The windows are dull as the bleary eyes
Of a drunken sot, and a black pool lies
Full of festering garbage outside the door.
The old stairs shudder from floor to floor,
As if they shrank with an occult dread
From the frequent criminal's guilty tread.
And blasphemous women and drunken men
Inhabit this foul, accurséd den,
And oaths and quarrels disturb the night,
And ruffianly faces offend the light,
And wretches that dare not look on the sun
Burrow within till the day is done.

Here, in a room on the highest flat,—
The playground of beetle and of rat,—
Almost roofless, and bare, and cold,
With the damp walls reeking with slimy mould,
A woman hung o'er one smouldering ember
That lay in the grate—it was in December.
O, how thin she was, and wan!
What sunken eyes! what lips thin drawn!
Her mouth how it quivered!
Her form how it shivered!
Her teeth how they chattered, as if they 'd cheat
Each skeleton limb
With the pantomime grim
Of having something at last to eat!

There is no sight more awful, say I,
To look upon, whether in earth or sky,
Than the terrible glare of a hungry eye!

The woman sat over the smouldering ember,
Pinched with the cold of that bitter December,
Passing her hand in a weariful way
O'er the faint firelight's flickering spray,
Till might be seen the faint red ray
Gleam through the thin, transparent palm,
As one beholds the sunshine calm
Through a painted window play.
Who that beheld her in sunnier day,
Lapped in roses and bathed in balm,
Would credit that this was Mary Degai?
But where was the money in stocks and in rents?
All squandered! The niggers? All sold! The per cents?
All gone! The magnificent Count Cherami
Had made with her money a seven-years spree
In Paris and London: had known figurantes,
Played at poker and bluff with one-thousand-franc antes,
Bred racers, built yachts, and in seven years' time
Neither husband nor wife had as much as a dime.

There was no help from father. The old man was dead,
With the curse unrevoked that he 'd laid on her head.
No help from her husband. A Count could not work
And slave to enrich some tyrannical Turk.
No help from herself,—thanks to Madame Cancan,
She had not a notion of getting along.
Her fingers revolted from needle and thread,
And to earn a loaf were by far too well bred.
Too proud for a beggar, too thin for the stage,
She lay like a log in this hard-working age,—
The dreary result of a fashion fanatic,
And helplessly starved in a comfortless attic.

Hark! a step on the stairs! How her thin cheek grows white
As she cowers away with a shiver of fright.
And the door is burst open,—the Count staggers in,
With a hiccup and oath, and a blasphemous din.
Mad with drink, crazed with hunger, and weary of life,
He revenges his sins on the head of his wife.
Let us hasten the door of that garret to close
On the nakedness, poverty, hunger, and woes,—
On the oaths, on the shrieks, on the cowardly blows!

O young ladies who sigh over novels in yellow,
And think Eugène Sue an exceeding smart fellow,
There are more aims in life than a crinoline skirt,
And a maid may be charming and yet not a flirt;
And merit is better than title, my dears:
In this country we 've no occupation for peers
Save those ones that our beautiful harbor affords,
And those piers are worth more than the whole House of Lords.
And though money, I know,
Is voted quite slow
In circles pretending to elegant rank,
There 's no very great sin in a sum at the bank.
Nor is marriage the portal to idle enjoyment:
The true salt of life is an active employment.
And if you have money there 's plenty of work
In the back-slums and alleys, where starvingly lurk
Humanity's outcasts, 'mid want and disease,—
Broken hearts to be healed, craving wants to appease.
Above all, ye young heroines, take this amount
Of wholesome advice,
Which like curry with rice
Gives a flavor, and saves one from saying things twice.
Be this axiom forever with you paramount:
Don't you ever advance all your cash on a Count.

Madame Cancan still lives, and still ogles and teaches,
And still her lay sermons on fashion she preaches;
Still keeps of smooth phrases the choicest assortment;
Still lectures on dress, easy carriage, deportment;
And spends all her skill in thus moulding her pets
Into very-genteelly-got-up marionettes.
Yes! puppet 's the word; for there 's nothing inside
But a clock work of vanity, fashion, and pride;
Puppets warranted sound, that without any falter
When wound up will go—just as far as the altar;
But when once the cap 's donned with the matronly border,
Lo! the quiet machine goes at once out of order.
Ah! Madame Cancan, you may paint, you may plaster
Each crevice of time that comes faster and faster;
But you cannot avert that black day of disaster,
When in turn you 'll be summoned yourself by a Master!
You may speak perfect French, and Italian, and Spanish,
And know how to enter a room and to vanish,
To flirt with your fan quite as well as did Soto,
To play well-bred games from écarté to loto;
But in spite of all this, won't you look rather small
When you 're called up before the great Teacher of all?
False teacher, false friend,—more, false speaker, false wife,
Dare you stand to be parsed in the grammar of life?
What account will you give of the many pure souls
To be guided by you through the quicksands and shoals
That beset their youth's shore? Were they harbored or wrecked?
You did n't take trouble to think, I expect;
For each cockle-shell boat,
When you set it afloat,
Had guitar-strings for ropes, crinoline for a sail,—
Nice rigging that was to encounter a gale!

Ah! Madame Cancan, our great Master above,
Who instructs us in charity, virtue, and love,
When he finds you deficient in all of your lessons,
A deliberate dunce both in substance and essence,
Will send you, I fear, to a Finishing School,
Which differs from yours though, in being less cool,
And kept on the corporal-punishment rule.
There 's excellent company there to be found:
The uppermost ranks you'll see floating around;
Some for grinding the poor are placed there underground,—
So the hind has his justice as well as the hound.
Nor is dress much less thought of there than in Manhattan,
You may not find silks, but you'll surely find Satan;
And I doubt if you'll like their severe education,—
There 's lots to be learned, and no recreation,
And what 's worse is—you'll never have any vacation.