 | The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone |  |
Prologue.
The Thread of Life and Death.
WHEN a stranger, under guidance and protection of
police, or a home missionary, fearlessly breaking
bread with outcasts, penetrates some gloomy court or
narrow alley in the great Christian city of New York, he
beholds destitution and squalor of most repulsive feature:
he discovers tottering buildings crowded with sickly and
depraved human beings; stalwart, malign-looking men,
glancing furtively at every passer-by; brazen-browed women,
with foul words upon their reeking lips; children
of impure thoughts and actions, leering with wicked precocity.
When he enters the wretched abiding-places of
these unhappy people, he may find, amid associations of
vice and uncleanness, many suffering and patient souls
Heavenly Father, and plucking, even out of their “ugly
and venomous” adversity, the “jewel” of immortal peace.
Such struggling ones do not dwell long in the darkness
and dolor of their probation; for the celestial ladders,
let down from Mercy's throne, rest quite as often upon the
black pavement of a tenant-court as amid the flowers that
tesselate a palace garden; and up, unceasingly, on the
shining rounds, glide disenthralled spirits of the poor and
lowly watchers for their Lord.
There were many strange occupants in the old houses
which formed the row called “Foley's Barracks,” fronting
on a street in the eastern quarter of the city. Six buildings
were joined, side by side, to form this row, and on the
ground floor of every building were four rooms. Through
each building ran a passage-way, four feet in width, and
on either side of this passage-way doors opened into the
four rooms. Every building was five stories in height, and
each floor was a duplicate in plan of the one below or
above. Through the six buildings ran the six passage-ways
to a rear court, or well, of twelve feet in width, separating
the six front buildings from six similar ones in the
rear. In the front row of “Foley's Barracks” were
twenty-four apartments on a floor, and in the rear twenty-four
upon a floor, and in both buildings were ten floors;
consequently, there were four hundred and eighty apartments
in the two rows, and one-half of these were closets
without light or air, in which the tenants of Foley's
Barracks were supposed to sleep—to the number, probably,
of every age.
It may well be supposed, then, that a variety of people
dwelt in such a population; some whose methods of life
were questionable or precarious, or altogether bad; others
who toiled incessantly, and more who idled time, and
begged their scanty means of subsistence. It is plain, also,
that hundreds of little children must dwell in such a
crowded locality; children, with voices varying from a
babe's thin treble to the changing tones of adolescence.
It would be curious to speculate as to places, and society,
and habits, whence each family had emerged long
since, before its members became tenants of Foley's Barracks.
What strange life-histories would be thereby
unveiled!—what changes of fortune!—what fearful alternations
of mortal suffering! But it is only one Historian
who readeth unerringly the intricate secrets involved in
the existence of His humblest subjects. Suffice it that no
leaf is blotted, no recorded word erased, of all the multitudinous
chronicles of the lowliest poor!
Nevertheless, dear Human Heart that beatest tenderly
for thy kind, we will go together—thou and I—to the
pavement of Foley's Barracks, and descend to its damp
and noisome cellars, where, as in dim rooms above, the
likenesses of their Maker dwell in dens unfit for brutes.
Go down those broken steps, where the green mould collects
in every crevice, and pass into a dark, cold vault,
with water submerging its rotten flooring. Step with
care, now; treading from brick to brick of a row placed
on their edges, to form a sort of causeway from the cellar
spread upon two thin boards which are raised by bricks
above the water's level. Close your eyes one moment,
that the darkness may be less when you look again, and
then glance toward the straw bed.
But your ears have already caught the cry of a new-born
child; another soul ushered into the world upon that
bed of straw, in a cellar submerged with water. You
advance, and your vision, a little more accustomed to the
obscurity, discovers that the new-born babe clings to the
breast of a dead mother! The woman died last night of
cholera. Turning to the right, you will see two other
corpses—that of a husband and son of the orphan babe's
mother. Presently the policeman will arrive and discover
the dead, and bear away the infant—sole remnant of a
family of paupers.
You have seen enough! No? Follow me, then, out of
the death-vault, to the warm air of a summer's twilight.
Before us a servant girl, in holiday attire, is leading by the
hand a toddling child, just essaying its first steps. But
you notice that the girl herself staggers, as if inebriated.
It is true: she has been visiting a “gossip” in yonder
tenant-house, and indulged in a glass of liquor which has
overcome her. It is her mistress's babe that she drags
along; a blue-eyed, angelic-looking infant, with golden
ringlets clustering on its white neck; it is worshipped by
its happy parents, and yet they intrusted its charge to the
drunken nurse who now staggers with it through the
streets, smouching its rich clothing with the dust in which
head, seats herself on yonder curb-stone, at the
mouth of that dark alley at the side of the tenant-house.
The weary babe ceases its cries, frightened at the nurse's
strange demeanor; while she, poor wretch, endeavors
vainly to recall her scattered senses. Presently, abandoning
the effort, and swaying back and forth, she drops to
sleep.
Now, behold, emerging from the black alley's mouth, a
grotesque and sordid figure—that of an old woman, bent
almost double, who carries a basket in one hand and a
long iron-hooked staff in the other. It is old Pris, the
Rag-Picker, whose evil eye is the terror of a superstitious
neighborhood. She approaches the intoxicated servant
girl, and stands grimly before her. The babe screams,
but its nurse awakes not, and the ancient crone grins
maliciously. Then, peering cautiously around, to be sure
that no observer is near, she disengages the babe's hand
from that of its unconscious nurse, and snatching the
innocent to her withered arms, hobbles away, and disappears
in the dark alley.
But the piercing screams of the child have aroused its
wretched nurse, who starts wildly up, misses her charge,
and, with a shriek, rushes wildly through the street, unknowing
whither. When she has gone, the old Rag-Picker
again creeps from the alley, with the babe in her
arms, not clothed as before in garments of fine linen and
velvet, but wrapped in a muddy and dingy blanket-rag,
which already soils its pure skin and draggles its golden
locks with the filth of the pavement. The hag leers about
totters away with her hook and basket, gloating
meanwhile, over the theft she has committed, and on the
price which the pawnbroker will pay for an infant's costly
garb.
Meanwhile the baby remains on the side-walk, while
the evening shadows gather fast. The intoxicated nurse
has fled away, half frantic. Presently, a policeman or
other passer-by will discover the foundling, and bear it
away.
Here, now, O Human Heart! are two babes; one born
of a dying mother, on the straw of the submerged cellar;
the other suckled amid luxury and refinement, and idolized
by its doting parents; both now naked, abandoned,
exposed to famine—waifs on the world's great stream.
Expound me now the problem: whither go the pair?
who shall unravel me the thread of the rich offspring and
the thread of the poor offspring? O Human Heart! let
us watch and wait.
Nay? thou wouldst go farther? Follow me, then,
away from the vicinity of Foley's Barracks—away from
the crowded Tenant-House—through narrow and ill-lighted
streets, till we emerge upon the thoroughfares of
business, and thence to the Avenues, where long rows of
princely mansions, with gardens and conservatories, lofty
ceilings, and broad casements, permit the balmy evening
air to penetrate every room, and disperse an aroma of
luxury in keeping with the magnificence that reigns
we look up to the heavens and behold a fleecy
cloud, tinged with the purple hues of sunset. When we
left Foley's Barracks, that cloud rested directly above the
cellar wherein lay the victims of cholera: it has traversed
the sky, following us, and now, as the last sunbeam disappears
in the west, it pauses, darkly over-shadowing an
Avenue-palace, ready to descend with the night-damps,
and enter the gilded chambers.
Nay! it has already entered; for, as we pass over the
marble threshold, we encounter pallid faces, and eyes
swollen with watching and tears. A beautiful child lies
cold on its little bier, and the mother is dying upon pillows
of lace, while the stricken master of the house bows
his head, and will not be comforted.
O Human Heart! that fleecy, purple-hued cloud arose
from the exhalations of disease in the Tenant-House, and
was wafted by summer zephyrs over squares, and gardens,
to descend, loaded with pestilence, upon the mansion of
luxury and love. The cholera was born of the submerged
hovel, and released unto the air, to destroy the life and
beauty of a palace. Unravel me the thread so closely
woven between the poor and the rich; the babe and
mother of the Avenue, and the babe and mother of Foley's
Barracks; and the pestilence uniting them in death.
| The tenant-house, or,, Embers from poverty's hearthstone | |