University of Virginia Library

2. CHAPTER II.

“I DID not write to you the next morning, as I
promised, for many reasons, which may appear in
the sequel. Bad news always comes soon enough.

“This city now presents a most singular spectacle.
The throng, and hurry, and I may say the
pleasure of business, have changed into the throng,
and hurry, and misery of fear. Carts that formerly
bore merchandise through the streets, are
now carrying beds, chairs, and tables of flying
families to their country-seats. The bodies of
carriages are dismounted, and the running gears
are covered with platforms, on which are placed
the whole culinary apparatus. Stages and steamboats
are crowded with all colours, sexes, and conditions.
The mason has forsaken his half-built
house, and the joiner has left his timber in the
street. The glittering bow-windows of the bazars
in Broadway are many of them darkened with
their night and Sunday barricades. The theatres
and places of amusement are closed, when the
season had just commenced. The entries to the

hotels look like the empty aisles of churches on
week days, and the streets look dismal, gloomy,
and silent.

“The only business which thrives is that of the
apothecaries and coffin-makers. From these facts
you have already gathered that the pestilence of
the East is really and truly here.

“Early on the morning of the day appointed for
our jaunt to the Falls of the Passaic, Lamar and
myself arose from our beds with all the ardour of
expectation, and the high impulses and impetuous
spirits of our best youthful and college days. Before
we had completed our toilet, my impatience
led me to the high four-story front window of our
apartment, which overlooks the eastern part of the
city, in the direction of Long Island and the Sound,
to see if a fickle climate promised to be propitious
to our undertaking.

“All nature seemed to smile upon our intended
expedition; the eastern turrets of the city, and
the bright curtains of misty drapery which fantastically
arose and hovered over Hurlgate, were
brilliantly tinged with the crimson rays of a
summer morning's sun; although the arbitrary
divisions of the year remind us that we are considerably
beyond the period of that happy season
in a northern climate.

“We were scarcely sooner in readiness than the
cabriolet, horses, and servants intended for the occasion.
As we slowly walked the horses to the
rendezvous where we had agreed to take an early

breakfast, fearing, perhaps, that we might disturb
the little nestlers in their slumbers, we observed
for the first time the various operations of morning
in a large city.

“Preparations were making at every door to
supply those incessant wants of natural or artificial
life, which, in so large a city, employ so
many hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Here was the dingy charcoal-vender, with his dull
monotonous song, which almost makes one imagine
that he is still slumbering through the disturbed
hours of the morning. Here was a large cask of
spring-water, sold by the gallon, and looking cool
and invigorating, especially to those countless
crowds of youth and men who enjoy the night
with the murderous pleasures of wine, only to
long for ice and soda-water in the morning. Here
was the sooty patent-sweeper, with our southern
corn-songs converted into the monotonous twang
of business. The various rival dairymen with
their milk carts standing along the curbstones, their
drivers yelling like western Indians to the tardy
housemaids, as they slowly rubbed their eyes, adjusted
their aprons, and sleepily handed out their
pitchers at random.

“As we rode along the street, maids were to be
seen sweeping the pavement, clerks taking down
the barricadoes of the night, and journeymen hurrying
to their employers. Gentlemen and ladies,
singly and in pairs, men-servants and maid-servants,
boys and girls, both coloured and white,

those of low as well as of high degree, were pouring
down those streets leading to the markets, which
you know, perhaps, are here situated in various
parts of the city.

“At length we arrived before the door of the
house which contained the magnetic points by
which so many of our movements are directed.
We dismounted, while Cato held the horses in his
most pompous style, seeming to have a shrewd
suspicion that his best behaviour at this house
would not be entirely unacceptable to us. When
we rang at the bell, no one hastily answered our
summons as on the former occasion, and our hearts
began to misgive us a little. We were surprised
that the green lattice-door, which opened externally,
was now gone, and its place supplied by a
very inhospitable cold-looking one of more solid
construction. We rang again, and after waiting
some time, heard some one fumbling at the door
inside, in a very different fashion from the sudden
overdone politeness of proud servants; one bolt
began to withdraw after another, until at length
the door opened. Who stood there, do you suppose?
not the gay and lively Isabel Hazlehurst,—
nor her mother,—nor the footman who usually did
the office,—but an old lady housekeeper in spectacles,
as deaf as a door-post, who invariably answered
to what she thought ought to have been
the question. We, of course, were not aware of
this at first, and were therefore not a little surprised,

after Lamar had expended some very useless courtesy
upon her, to hear,—

“ `And what's your will, gentlemen?'

“Lamar screamed the object of our visit loud
enough in her ear to have awakened the whole
family, had they been still asleep.

“ `O ay! O ay!' said she, `you are the gallants,
you say, and you want the bit letter,' and away
she waddled, leaving us not much less impatient
than our horses, which were pawing the pavement
at a furious rate.

“Presently she returned, and delivered to Lamar
a note directed to me; it was from young Hazlehurst,
apologizing in the name of the family and
the ladies for our disappointment, and pleading as
the cause the ravages of the pestilence and the
dread of the family; concluding by stating, that
they had all gone up the Hudson to the country-seat
of Mr. Brumley (Miss St. Clair's step-father),
and would return together as soon as the Board of
Health pronounced it safe to do so; when they
would be happy to see us again, and to compensate
for our present disappointment by making the
promised jaunt.

“Lamar sprang upon his horse and galloped
away down the street, the fire flying from under
his feet as if some imp of darkness was at his
heels. I saw no more of him that morning, but
fortunately met Arthur soon after breakfast. He
seemed astonished that we had not fled also, and
still more so when I communicated my desire to

see something of this disease, and especially in
those haunts where the wretched paupers were
congregated.

“Our first visit was to that celebrated place the
Five Points, called so from there being five corner
houses on the spot, one of them triangular, of
course; the others being formed by two streets
intersecting each other at right angles. One of
these in one direction divides into two streets, running
one on each side of the triangular house.

“As we approached the spot, the loaded atmosphere
from the filthy streets began to salute our
olfactories, and various evidences were presented
to our eyes of the loathsome and disgusting dissipation
which was still kept up, in spite of the terrors
of the grim monster. The corporation wagons
or hearses were to be seen standing along the
streets, with the end gate down, into which two
men were stacking the white pine coffins as high as
the lid would admit, and often bringing two and
three of these from one house. I will confess to
you that this struck me with horror at first,—not
fear, but horror,—and I must remark to you an
observation of mine connected with it; you know
I am fond of treasuring up these, great or small.

“When a person first enters these dismal regions
during the prevalence of an epidemic, he is ten
times more struck by the appearance of these
crowded coffins, than he is at the sight of a whole
hospital of patients with the epidemic. In the first
house we entered, were three persons lying ill of

the disease in one room; all of them of the very
lowest class of drunken debauchees. I can
scarcely give you an idea of the wretched condition
of these tatterdemalions, by any thing which
you have seen in the South. They are far more
filthy, degraded, and wretched than any slave I
have ever beheld, under the most cruel and tyrannical
master. If such is their condition in ordinary
times, what must it be now? they are in the lowest
depths of human degradation and misery.

“Two of the three were females,—mother and
daughter; the latter looked as if she was thirty-five
years of age, though she told me she was
only twenty. She was thought to be convalescent,
and I can truly say that out of the hundreds whom
I have seen, she was the only one of her class who
exhibited any thing like remorse of conscience for
her past life. One would be apt to suppose that
there would be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing
of teeth,—but there is no such thing; they die
like dogs, amid the ribald jests, vulgar wit, and
Billingsgate slang of their quondam associates.
Self-preservation seems to have ceased to be a law
of nature here, and death has become familiar to
the eyes of these wretches, as carnage does to the
soldier. I asked the daughter if she and her mother
had ever been in better circumstances. She
said they had, far better; that they had once been
comfortable and happy, but that her wretched
mother had deserted her father's house while he
was gone to sea, which had driven him to dissipation,

ruin, and the state-prison, and them to
their present condition; there was no kind of feeling
exhibited by the mother, either in regard to the
past or the future; the sufferings of the present
moment occupied her, both soul and body, and this
is the case with ninety-nine in the hundred of all
those whom I have seen sick and dying; they forcibly
remind me of a flock of sheep swept off suddenly
by some rapid distemper. I never could
realize the idea of the state of feeling in Paris
during the bloody days of the reign of terror until
now; I can readily conceive how indifferent men
may become to death, by being stupified with its
hourly exhibition.

“There are some heart-rending scenes here,—
such as parents just landed from Europe, who die
and leave little children wandering about the
streets, without any one to know or care for them.
Dead bodies lying in the houses by twos and threes
and sixes; no one caring or knowing of them,
until the corporation officials come round, and then
they are dragged out into the middle of the floor
and thrown into pine coffins, clothes and all—unknown
oftentimes, even by name.

“From whence did these people come? Most
of them from happy homes, and tender and affectionate
friends in the country. Attracted here,
perhaps, by gay scenes, and brilliant delusions, and
intoxicating delights, which greet the young and
thoughtless upon a first entrance into a city life.
Misfortune or misadventure, perhaps, first throws

them from the current of business into the current
of amusements—this again carries them down to
dissipation—perhaps to crime. And finally, death
meets them in these awful sinks of perdition. Urgent,
indeed, should be the calls of business or
ambition which lead a youth of any tolerable prospects
in the country, to fly to the greater theatre
of a populous city.

“With such as these last mentioned, I observed
one remarkable fact during the prevalence of the
epidemic. Until a fatal disease seizes them, they
live from year to year, month to month, and day
to day, under some strange hallucination; expecting
some miraculous change of fortune, or a turn
of luck, as they call it. But when finally the grim
monster seizes them, their consternation and confusion
are equal to their previous delusions. For
the first time in years, perhaps, they see themselves
in their true outlines. The shock is frightful to
look upon; the criminal brought to the scaffold
does not appear more wretched and overwhelmed.

“I have seen one of these precocious sots first
really and thoroughly convinced of the extent of his
degradation upon his death-bed.