University of Virginia Library

37. CHAPTER XXXVII.

The Dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in
the vicinity of the docks are many very painful sights.

In going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore
Clipper, I generally passed through a narrow street called
“Launcelott's-Hey,” lined with dingy, prison-like cotton
warehouses. In this street, or rather alley, you seldom see
any one but a truck-man, or some solitary old warehouse-keeper,
haunting his smoky den like a ghost.

Once, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail,
which seemed to come out of the earth. It was but a strip
of crooked side-walk where I stood; the dingy wall was on
every side, converting the mid-day into twilight; and not a
soul was in sight. I started, and could almost have run,
when I heard that dismal sound. It seemed the low, hopeless,
endless wail of some one forever lost. At last I advanced
to an opening which communicated downward with
deep tiers of cellars beneath a crumbling old warehouse; and
there, some fifteen feet below the walk, crouching in nameless
squalor, with her head bowed over, was the figure of
what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid
bosom two shrunken things like children, that leaned toward
her, one on each side. At first, I knew not whether they
were alive or dead. They made no sign; they did not
move or stir; but from the vault came that soul-sickening
wail.

I made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence,
echoed far and near; but there was no response. Louder
still; when one of the children lifted its head, and cast upward

a faint glance; then closed its eyes, and lay motionless.
The woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but let
fall her eye again. They were dumb and next to dead with
want. How they had crawled into that den, I could not
tell; but there they had crawled to die. At that moment
I never thought of relieving them; for death was so stamped
in their glazed and unimploring eyes, that I almost regarded
them as already no more. I stood looking down on them,
while my whole soul swelled within me; and I asked myself,
What right had any body in the wide world to smile and
be glad, when sights like this were to be seen? It was
enough to turn the heart to gall; and make a man-hater of
a Howard. For who were these ghosts that I saw? Were
they not human beings? A woman and two girls? With
eyes, and lips, and ears like any queen? with hearts which,
though they did not bound with blood, yet beat with a dull,
dead ache that was their life.

At last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley,
hoping to meet there some ragged old women, whom I had
daily noticed groping amid foul rubbish for little particles of
dirty cotton, which they washed out and sold for a trifle.

I found them; and accosting one, I asked if she knew
of the persons I had just left. She replied, that she did
not; nor did she want to. I then asked another, a miserable,
toothless old woman, with a tattered strip of coarse
baling stuff round her body. Looking at me for an instant,
she resumed her raking in the rubbish, and said that she
knew who it was that I spoke of; but that she had no time
to attend to beggars and their brats. Accosting still another,
who seemed to know my errand, I asked if there was no
place to which the woman could be taken. “Yes,” she
replied, “to the church-yard.” I said she was alive, and
not dead.

“Then she'll never die,” was the rejoinder. “She's
been down there these three days, with nothing to eat;—
that I know myself.”

“She desarves it,” said an old hag, who was just placing
on her crooked shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was
turning to totter off, “that Betsey Jennings desarves it—
was she ever married? tell me that.”

Leaving Launcelott's-Hey, I turned into a more frequented
street; and soon meeting a policeman, told him of the
condition of the woman and the girls.

“It's none of my business, Jack,” said he. “I don't
belong to that street.”

“Who does then?”

“I don't know. But what business is it of yours? Are
you not a Yankee?”

“Yes,” said I, “but come, I will help you remove that
woman, if you say so.”

“There, now, Jack, go on board your ship, and stick to
it; and leave these matters to the town.”

I accosted two more policemen, but with no better success;
they would not even go with me to the place. The
truth was, it was out of the way, in a silent, secluded spot;
and the misery of the three outcasts, hiding away in the
ground, did not obtrude upon any one.

Returning to them, I again stamped to attract their attention;
but this time, none of the three looked up, or even
stirred. While I yet stood irresolute, a voice called to me
from a high, iron-shuttered window in a loft over the way;
and asked what I was about. I beckoned to the man, a sort
of porter, to come down, which he did; when I pointed
down into the vault.

“Well,” said he, “what of it?”

“Can't we get them out?” said I, “haven't you some
place in your warehouse where you can put them? have
you nothing for them to eat?”

“You're crazy, boy,” said he; “do you suppose, that
Parkins and Wood want their warehouse turned into a hospital?”

I then went to my boarding-house, and told Handsome

Mary of what I had seen; asking her if she could not do
something to get the woman and girls removed; or if she
could not do that, let me have some food for them. But
though a kind person in the main, Mary replied that she
gave away enough to beggars in her own street (which
was true enough) without looking after the whole neighborhood.

Going into the kitchen, I accosted the cook, a little shriveled-up
old Welshwoman, with a saucy tongue, whom the
sailors called Brandy-Nan; and begged her to give me
some cold victuals, if she had nothing better, to take to the
vault. But she broke out in a storm of swearing at the
miserable occupants of the vault, and refused. I then stepped
into the room where our dinner was being spread; and
waiting till the girl had gone out, I snatched some bread
and cheese from a stand, and thrusting it into the bosom of
my frock, left the house. Hurrying to the lane, I dropped
the food down into the vault. One of the girls caught at
it convulsively, but fell back, apparently fainting; the sister
pushed the other's arm aside, and took the bread in her
hand; but with a weak uncertain grasp like an infant's.
She placed it to her mouth; but letting it fall again, murmured
faintly something like “water.” The woman did not
stir; her head was bowed over, just as I had first seen her.

Seeing how it was, I ran down toward the docks to a
mean little sailor tavern, and begged for a pitcher; but the
cross old man who kept it refused, unless I would pay for it.
But I had no money. So as my boarding-house was some
way off, and it would be lost time to run to the ship for my
big iron pot; under the impulse of the moment, I hurried
to one of the Boodle Hydrants, which I remembered having
seen running near the scene of a still smoldering fire in an
old rag house; and taking off a new tarpaulin hat, which
had been loaned me that day, filled it with water.

With this, I returned to Launcelott's-Hey; and with
considerable difficulty, like getting down into a well, I contrived

to descend with it into the vault; where there was
hardly space enough left to let me stand. The two girls
drank out of the hat together; looking up at me with an
unalterable, idiotic expression, that almost made me faint.
The woman spoke not a word, and did not stir. While the
girls were breaking and eating the bread, I tried to lift the
woman's head; but, feeble as she was, she seemed bent
upon holding it down. Observing her arms still clasped
upon her bosom, and that something seemed hidden under
the rags there, a thought crossed my mind, which impelled
me forcibly to withdraw her hands for a moment; when I
caught a glimpse of a meager little babe, the lower part of
its body thrust into an old bonnet. Its face was dazzlingly
white, even in its squalor; but the closed eyes looked like
balls of indigo. It must have been dead some hours.

The woman refusing to speak, eat, or drink, I asked one
of the girls who they were, and where they lived; but she
only stared vacantly, muttering something that could not be
understood.

The air of the place was now getting too much for me;
but I stood deliberating a moment, whether it was possible
for me to drag them out of the vault. But if I did, what
then? They would only perish in the street, and here they
were at least protected from the rain; and more than that,
might die in seclusion.

I crawled up into the street, and looking down upon them
again, almost repented that I had brought them any food;
for it would only tend to prolong their misery, without hope
of any permanent relief: for die they must very soon; they
were too far gone for any medicine to help them. I hardly
know whether I ought to confess another thing that occurred
to me as I stood there; but it was this—I felt an almost
irresistible impulse to do them the last mercy, of in some
way putting an end to their horrible lives; and I should
almost have done so, I think, had I not been deterred by
thoughts of the law. For I well knew that the law, which

would let them perish of themselves without giving them
one cup of water, would spend a thousand pounds, if necessary,
in convicting him who should so much as offer to
relieve them from their miserable existence.

The next day, and the next, I passed the vault three
times, and still met the same sight. The girls leaning
up against the woman on each side, and the woman with
her arms still folding the babe, and her head bowed. The
first evening I did not see the bread that I had dropped
down in the morning; but the second evening, the bread
I had dropped that morning remained untouched. On
the third morning the smell that came from the vault was
such, that I accosted the same policeman I had accosted
before, who was patrolling the same street, and told him
that the persons I had spoken to him about were dead,
and he had better have them removed. He looked as
if he did not believe me, and added, that it was not his
street.

When I arrived at the docks on my way to the ship, I
entered the guard-house within the walls, and asked for one
of the captains, to whom I told the story; but, from what
he said, was led to infer that the Dock Police was distinct
from that of the town, and this was not the right place to
lodge my information.

I could do no more that morning, being obliged to repair
to the ship; but at twelve o'clock, when I went to dinner,
I hurried into Launcelott's-Hey, when I found that the vault
was empty. In place of the women and children, a heap of
quick-lime was glistening.

I could not learn who had taken them away, or whither
they had gone; but my prayer was answered—they were
dead, departed, and at peace.

But again I looked down into the vault, and in fancy
beheld the pale, shrunken forms still crouching there. Ah!
what are our creeds, and how do we hope to be saved?
Tell me, oh Bible, that story of Lazarus again, that I may

find comfort in my heart for the poor and forlorn. Surrounded
as we are by the wants and woes of our fellow-men,
and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their
pains, are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and
making merry in the house of the dead?