 | Letters from New York |  |
LETTER XIV.
I was always eager for the spring-time, but never so much
as now.
Patience yet a little longer! and I shall find delicate bells
of the trailing arbutus, fragrant as an infant's breath, hidden
deep, under their coverlid of autumn leaves, like modest
worth in this pretending world. My spirit is weary for
rural rambles. It is sad walking in the city. The streets
shut out the sky, even as commerce comes between the soul
and heaven. The busy throng, passing and repassing,
fetter freedom, while they offer no sympathy. The loneliness
of the soul is deeper, and far more restless, than in the
solitude of the mighty forest. Wherever are woods and
fields I find a home; each tinted leaf and shining pebble
is to me a friend; and wherever I spy a wild flower, I am
ready to leap up, clap my hands, and exclaim, “Cockatoo!
he know me very well!” as did the poor New Zealander,
when he recognised a bird of his native clime, in the menageries
of London.
But amid these magnificent masses of sparkling marble,
hewn in prison, I am all alone. For eight weary months,
I have met in the crowded streets but two faces I had ever
seen before. Of some, I would I could say that I should
never see them again; but they haunt me in my sleep, and
come between me and the morning. Beseeching looks,
begging the comfort and the hope I have no power to give.
Hungry eyes, that look as if they had pleaded long for
sympathy, and at last gone mute in still despair. Through
what woful, what frightful masks, does the human soul look
forth, leering, peeping, and defying, in this thoroughfare of
nations. Yet in each and all lie the capacities of an archangel;
we tread carelessly under foot, and which decays, perchance,
for want of soil to root in.
The other day, I went forth for exercise merely, without
other hope of enjoyment than a farewell to the setting sun,
on the now deserted Battery, and a fresh kiss from the
breezes of the sea, ere they passed through the polluted
city, bearing healing on their wings. I had not gone far,
when I met a little ragged urchin, about four years old, with
a heap of newspapers, “more big as he could carry,” under
his little arm, and another clenched in his small, red fist.
The sweet voice of childhood was prematurely cracked into
shrillness, by screaming street cries, at the top of his
lungs; and he looked blue, cold, and disconsolate. May
the angels guard him! How I wanted to warm him in my
heart. I stood, looking after him, as he went shivering
along. Imagination followed him to the miserable cellar
where he probably slept on dirty straw; I saw him flogged,
after his day of cheerless toil, because he had failed to bring
home pence enough for his parents' grog; I saw wicked
ones come muttering and beckoning between his young
soul and heaven; they tempted him to steal, to avoid the
dreaded beating. I saw him, years after, bewildered and
frightened, in the police-office, surrounded by hard faces.
Their law-jargon conveyed no meaning to his ear, awakened
no slumbering moral sense, taught him no clear distinction
between right and wrong; but from their cold, harsh tones,
and heartless merriment, he drew the inference that they
were enemies; and, as such, he hated them. At that moment,
one tone like a mother's voice might have wholly
changed his earthly destiny; one kind word of friendly
counsel might have saved him—as if an angel, standing in
the genial sunlight, had thrown to him one end of a garland,
and gently diminishing the distance between them, had
drawn him safely out of the deep and tangled labyrinth,
him lose his way.
But watchmen and constables were around him, and
they have small fellowship with angels. The strong impulses
that might have become overwhelming love for his
race, are perverted to the bitterest hatred. He tries the universal
resort of weakness against force; if they are too
strong for him, he will be too cunning for them. Their
cunning is roused to detect his cunning: and thus the gallows
game is played, with interludes of damnable merriment
from police reports, whereat the heedless multitude laugh;
while angels weep over the slow murder of a human soul.
When, oh when, will men learn that society makes and
cherishes the very crimes it so fiercely punishes, and in
punishing reproduces?
And then, because ye've robbed him, ye enslave;
Ye shut out from him the sweet light of day,
And then, because he's in the dark, ye pave
The road, that leads him to his wished for grave,
With stones of stumbling: then, if he but tread
Darkling and slow, ye call him “fool” and “knave”—
Doom him to toil, and yet deny him bread:
Chains round his limbs ye throw, and curses on his head.”
God grant the little shivering carrier-boy a brighter destiny
than I have foreseen for him.
A little further on, I encountered two young boys fighting
furiously for some coppers, that had been given them and
had fallen on the pavement. They had matted black hair,
large, lustrous eyes, and an olive complexion. They were
evidently foreign children, from the sunny clime of Italy or
Spain, and nature had made them subjects for an artist's
dream. Near by on the cold stone steps, sat a ragged, emaciated
woman, whom I conjectured, from the resemblance
of her large, dark eyes, might be their mother; but she
looked on their fight with languid indifference, as if seeing,
she saw it not. I spoke to her, and she shook her head in
language. Poor, forlorn wanderer! would I could place
thee and thy beautiful boys under shelter of sun-ripened
vines, surrounded by the music of thy mother-land! Pence
I will give thee, though political economy reprove the deed.
They can but appease the hunger of the body; they cannot
soothe the hunger of thy heart; that I obey the kindly
impulse may make the world none the better—perchance
some iota the worse; yet I must needs follow it—I cannot
otherwise.
I raised my eyes above the woman's weather-beaten head,
and saw behind the window, of clear, plate glass, large vases
of gold and silver, curiously wrought. They spoke
significantly of the sad contrasts in this disordered world;
and excited in my mind whole volumes, not of political, but
of angelic economy. “Truly,” said I, “if the Law of Love
prevailed, vases of gold and silver might even more abound
—but no homeless outcast would sit shivering beneath their
glittering mockery. All would be richer, and no man the
poorer. When will the world learn its best wisdom? When
will the mighty discord come into heavenly harmony?” I
looked at the huge stone structures of commerical wealth,
and they gave an answer that chilled my heart. Weary of
city walks, I would have turned homeward; but nature,
ever true and harmonious, beckoned to me from the Battery,
and the glowing twilight gave me friendly welcome. It
seemed as if the dancing Spring Hours had thrown their
rosy mantles on old silvery winter in the lavishness of
youthful love.
I opened my heart to the gladsome influence, and forgot
that earth was not a mirror of the heavens. It was but for
a moment; for there under the leafless trees, lay two ragged
little boys, asleep in each other's arms. I remembered having
read in the police reports, the day before, that two little
children, thus found, had been taken up as vagabonds. They
dead for months; how they had formed an intimate friendship,
had begged together, ate together, hungered together,
and together slept uncovered beneath the steel-cold stars.
The twilight seemed no longer warm; and brushing away
a tear, I walked hastily homeward. As I turned into the
street where God has provided me with a friendly shelter,
something lay across my path. It was a woman, apparently
dead; with garments all draggled in New-York gutters,
blacker than waves of the infernal rivers. Those who
gathered around, said she had fallen in intoxication, and
was rendered senseless by the force of the blow. They
carried her to the watch-house, and the doctor promised
she should be well attended. But, alas, for watch-house
charities to a breaking heart! I could not bring myself to
think otherwise than that hers was a breaking heart. Could
she but give a full revelation of early emotions checked in
their full and kindly flow, of affections repressed, of hopes
blighted, and energies misemployed through ignorance, the
heart would kindle and melt, as it does when genius stirs
its deepest recesses.
It seemed as if the voice of human wo was destined to
follow me through the whole of that unblest day. Late in
the night I heard the sound of voices in the street, and raising
the window, saw a poor, staggering woman in the hands
of a watchman. My ear caught the words, “Thank you
kindly, sir. I should like to go home.” The sad and
humble accents in which the simple phrase was uttered,
the dreary image of the watch-house, which that poor
wretch dreamed was her home, proved too much for my
overloaded sympathies. I hid my face in the pillow, and
wept; for “my heart was almost breaking with the misery
of my kind.”
I thought, then, that I would walk no more abroad, till
the fields were green. But my mind and body grow alike
free breeze, and the wide, blue dome that overarches and
embraces all. Again I rambled forth, under the February
sun, as mild and genial as the breath of June. Heart, mind,
and frame grew glad and strong, as we wandered on, past
the old Stuyvesant church, which a few years agone was
surrounded by fields and Dutch farm-houses, but now stands
in the midst of peopled streets;—and past the trim, new
houses, with their green verandahs, in the airy suburbs.
Following the railroad, which lay far beneath our feet, as
we wound our way over the hills, we came to the burying-ground
of the poor. Weeds and brambles grew along the
sides, and the stubble of last year's grass waved over it,
like dreary memories of the past; but the sun smiled on it,
like God's love on the desolate soul. It was inexpressibly
touching to see the frail memorials of affection, placed there
by hearts crushed under the weight of poverty. In one
place was a small rude cross of wood, with the initials J.
S. cut with a penknife, and apparently filled with ink. In
another a small hoop had been bent into the form of a heart,
painted green, and nailed on a stick at the head of the grave.
On one upright shingle was painted only “Mutter;” the
German word for Mother. On another was scrawled, as
if with charcoal, “So ruhe wohl, du unser liebes kind.”
(Rest well, our beloved child.) One recorded life's brief
history thus: “H. G. born in Bavaria; died in New-York.”
Another short epitaph, in French, told that the sleeper came
from the banks of the Seine.
The predominance of foreign epitaphs affected me deeply.
Who could now tell with what high hopes those departed
ones had left the heart-homes of Germany, the
sunny hills of Spain, the laughing skies of Italy, or the
wild beauty of Switzerland? Would not the friends they
had left in their childhood's home, weep scalding tears to
find them in a pauper's grave, with their initials rudely
memorials. It seemed there was none to care whether
they lived or died. A wide, deep trench was open; and
there I could see piles of unpainted coffins heaped one
upon the other, left uncovered with earth, till the yawning
cavity was filled with its hundred tenants.
Returning homeward, we passed a Catholic burying-ground.
It belonged to the upper classes, and was filled
with marble monuments, covered with long inscriptions.
But none of them touched my heart like that rude shingle,
with the simple word “Mutter” inscribed thereon. The
gate was open, and hundreds of Irish, in their best Sunday
clothes, were stepping reverently among the graves, and
kissing the very sods. Tenderness for the dead is one of
the loveliest features of their nation and their church.
The evening was closing in, as we returned, thoughtful,
but not gloomy. Bright lights shone through crimson, blue,
and green, in the apothecaries' windows, and were reflected
in prismatic beauty from the dirty pools in the street.
It was like poetic thoughts in the minds of the poor and
ignorant; like the memory of pure aspirations in the
vicious; like a rainbow of promise, that God's spirit never
leaves even the most degraded soul. I smiled, as my spirit
gratefully accepted this love-token from the outward; and
I thanked our heavenly Father for a world beyond this.
| Letters from New York | |