University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

I had changed my lodgings, seeking shelter in the suburbs, from
the crowd and confusion of Broadway and the Park. The omnibus,
at a shilling a ride, enabled me, while enjoying a seclusion
akin to that of country life, to seek the city at any moment when
pleasure or business called me thither. The second morning after
my transition, I suffered myself to look round upon my new
neighbourhood. I found myself in very good quarters for a
single man. Our house was well arranged and spacious. It
stood apart from all others, while, on either hand, the green of a
well-stored vegetable garden gratified the eye, and the breezes
from two quarters of the compass poured in at my windows. We
were just in advance of the onward march of city improvements.
Our pavements were incomplete, and the clang and clamour of
cart, cab and carriage, were moderate accordingly, when compared
with the stunning sounds with which they momently assailed
me in Broadway. But, as if to qualify this advantage,
there was just opposite, one of those annoyances which are to be
found in the suburbs of every large city, in the shape of a cluster
of low, crowded and filthy looking rookeries,—a nest of wooden
structures, dingy, dark, narrow, and tumbling to decay, which
still, however, gave shelter to a crowd of inmates. Every tenement
of this nest, was filled from basement to attic;—the people
were of the very poorest, and some of them, evidently, of the
most dissolute, character. Rags and dirt were the conspicuous
badges at every window, and no prospect could be more melancholy
than that of the poor, puny, little children, who were
despatched from rise of morn to set of sun, to glean, as beggars,
from better furnished portions of the city, their daily supplies of
pennies and “cold victuals.”

I am not, however, one of those persons who sicken at the
thousand aspects of human misery. Some experience of the
world and its vicissitudes, acquired at a period when other men
are usually about to begin their lessons, had fortified my senses,
and prepared me to look with fortitude, if not indifference, upon
those evils of life which are unhappily inevitable. I did not
forego the prospect from the window, because it showed me
suffering as well as sunshine; and, if I could not, in any great
degree, alleviate the one, I saw not, in consequence, any good
reason why I should reject or forego the other. My morning

and afternoon contemplations included the `rookeries.' I saw the
outgoings and incomings of their motley population, and acquired,
after a moderate period, a certain degree of interest, in some few
of the several inhabitants. There was one old woman, a sturdy
Meg Merrilies sort of body, who carried out, empty, a sack some
five feet in length, which I am sure she always brought home full.
What she brought, and what use she made of the commodity, I
never troubled myself to inquire or even to conjecture. The
simple appearance of the old dame at her departure and return,
was enough for my curiosity. In going forth, her tongue sounded
an alarum to the whole neighbourhood, which sufficiently apprised
it of that important event. Very different was the manner
of her return. She entered without beat of drum. Her tongue
was most singularly silent, and the fierce, consequential air with
which she sallied forth, was exchanged for that of the most quiet,
meek and cautious of all humble adventurers. She was not my
only acquaintance among the inhabitants of this motley settlement.
There was a great, hulking, heavily built person most
like a sailor in appearance, but one, evidently too well fed to
relish a frequent journey to the cross-trees, who also secured some
portion of my daily consideration. He, too, presented himself
under different aspects, at his diurnal periods of egress and return.
In the first case, he went forth, feeble, tottering, slightly lamed,
and, I think, irrecoverably blind;—a decided improvement, however,
always followed his morning visit to the city. He evidently
met with Brandreth, the pill dealer, and Williams, the oculist, by
the way. His eye-sight left him in no doubt about his “home-ward
bound” course; and his legs were then better able to pursue
it. This was the more remarkable, as, at such periods, his
arms were usually filled with stuffs, clothes, food and fragments
of one description or another, in such quantity and weight as
might have given a more vigorous person reason to stagger beneath
the burden. He evidently pursued his craft with a success
which convinced me that he might have arrived, in other days,
at a post of high command even in Alsatia. There were other
persons in this community, who, in their places and periods, also
provoked, though in a far less degree, my observation and inquiry;
and it would not, perhaps, be a very difficult matter, were
I so minded, to awaken a similar interest in most of my readers
in behalf of one or more individuals of its population, quite as
mysterious as that of the “Stout Gentleman,” of one of our most
graceful writers, whom all are pleased to honour. Certainly,
there were physical allotments among my friends of the `rookery,'
which, alone, were sufficient to impress the spectator with heedful
deference. Brawny arms of Hibernian vigour brandished the
broom, and flourished in the suds. Voices, of aristocratic authority,
rose suddenly and stunningly upon the senses, and never did
the damsels of Eleusinia declare themselves in a dialect of more
unctuous emphasis and spirit in the hearing of assembled Greece.
Of the mysterious character of those business operations which
were pursued among them, I have already spoken. A very
curious scandal-monger in literature might live for months in the
periodicals by examining the domestic records of my suburban
neighbourhood.

My tastes did not exactly lead me to institute any such examination.
I was content to see the beauties of the scene afar off.
Morning and evening glimpses satisfied my curiosity; and my
old woman with her long sack, and my sturdy sailor with his
imperfect eyesight, upon both of whom such radical changes
took place in the progress of each diurnal sun, were studies
which amply requited all my curious cacoëthes. The morning
cries and clamour of the former aroused me from sluggish slumbers;
and her usual period of return at evening, was equivalent
to the tintinabulary summons to my evening repast—both of
these important events happening to occur usually at the same
hour of the day. A little pleasurable excitement, which was
pleasurable, perhaps, only because of the excitement, served to
reconcile me to a neighbourhood, the contemplation of which,
while it failed to stimulate curiosity, did not contribute to the
gratification of any of my usual tastes. I was just sufficiently
remote from the scene I witnessed, to make it visible to me
through that hallowing medium which turns the past into poetry,
and elevates the foreign into dignity and grace. I must confess
to a reluctance to any nearer approximation, which was so strong
as to prompt me to make use of the back door of my lodging
house, in the greater number of cases; and to seek, by a street
in the rear, that outlet to the city, which, otherwise, could only
have been marked by almost actual contact with the suds and
sentiment of the `rookery.'