University of Virginia Library

5. Chapter V.
Tenants of Foley's Barracks.

IF poverty be a sin, there was a poor widow who dwelt
in Foley's Barracks, who might be said to be very
wicked, indeed; if patience and industry be virtues, this
same widow was nearly angelic in their practice. She
had been, during many years, a tenant of one of the humblest
rooms in the third story of that crowded wilderness
of brick, and had there reared a young daughter, now in
her fifteenth year. A small room, of twelve feet square,
will with a dark and narrow closet adjoining, dignified by the
name of bed-chamber, constituted premises for which the
widow Marvin paid a monthly rent of six dollars, the
means to meet which she laboriously scraped together by
a division of her daily time into as many varieties of work
as she could fortunately obtain to do; sometimes securing
the job of house-cleaning in some friendly patron's family,
sometimes toiling at the wash-tub at home, periodically
scrubbing the floors and paint of a neighboring school-house,
and always ready with her needle at odd bits of
plain sewing, on shirts or coarse garments, in default of
having which, she plied the same busy implement in keeping
her own shabby clothing, as well as that of her child,

most scrupulously free from raggedness. The neighbors
on the third floor (and the oldest remembered her as their
predecessor) testified to her virtues as a fellow-tenant,
never quarrelsome or annoying; and one and all remarked,
with much marvelling thereat, that “Widow Marvin was
a good woman, and beat the world for keeping clean.”

How this latter excellence became so noted in the
widow was, indeed, not strange, though how she contrived
to deserve it might be a problem to any one at all conversant
with the habits of tenants in Foley's Barracks, or
with the difficulties which the pursuit of cleanliness in so
filthy a place must entail upon such as sought to possess
that quality akin to godliness. It must be owned that
great hardship and incessant care were prerequisites; for
heavy pails of water were to be carried through narrow
entries and up steep staircases, trodden daily by thousands
of feet; and varieties of garbage and accumulations were
to be carried downward through the same avenues; all
this, it may be fancied, adding arduous features to the
good woman's domestic industry. Nevertheless, Widow
Marvin did manage, through many, many years, to deserve
and maintain the reputation of a “clean body that ought
to be a pattern;” while it is extremely problematical if
the pattern was followed by many of the residents in
Foley's Barracks. Little, however, did the poor soul think
of influencing by her example, though perhaps it had a
good effect, of which she was wholly unconscious. She
loved to be neat herself, and to make her humble domicile
as comfortable as smoky chimneys, damp walls, and
stifling closeness would allow; and so, day after day,

through year and year, she scrubbed the floors and walls,
polished the row of tin vessels on her pine dresser, kept
her hearth bright with “redding,” and her narrow windows
clean, for the early sun to peep into unashamed.
Such habits produced their natural result, in imparting
neatness and taste to her child; and, therefore, much to
the wonder of improvident and reckless neighbors, Emily
Marvin, the widow's little daughter, grew up totally unlike
the squalid children on every floor of the Barracks—
never absenting herself from her mother to make acquaintances
among the constantly-changing tenants, but learning,
little by little, to imitate the widow's industry, and
unconsciously wearing her patched but spotless clothes
with an easy grace that might have been remarked in
quarters remote from this miserable tenant-house.

It might have been, that the Widow Marvin's stated
task of cleaning the district school-house suggested to her
mind the importance of attention to her daughter's childish
mind; though it is more likely that the fact (well-whispered
about the Barracks) of her having herself “seen
better days,” determined the good woman to afford her
child such means as could be commanded, to obtain an
education. Indeed, there were some who averred that the
widow was not devoid of accomplishments learned in
youth, and that she had been known to “play tunes” on
a piano-forte, in some remote period, albeit her fingers
were now stiff with hard toil. Be that as it may, the
mother denied herself many a comfort, in order that her
daughter could go decently to a daily school, the result of
which was that Emily, who was naturally quick and intelligent,

became, at a very early age, possessed of much
useful knowledge, while other children of her condition
in the Barracks had learned only lessons of cunning or
depravity. Well, in sooth, was the widow repaid for her
privations and struggles, in the untiring devotion of her
child, who strove by every mark of affection to prove her
appreciation of so good a mother; and it was pleasant to
behold the two, in neat though humble garb, wending
their way on Sunday to a neighboring church, or to listen
in the evening at their door, when Emily read from the
newspaper some stories of the great world that rolled its
mighty tides of life beyond the narrow limits of a tenant-house
court.

But, of late, the widow's health had been breaking, and
it was plain that an existence of wintry labor and endurance
would soon yield to the coming of that spring which
blossoms beyond the grave; for consumption, with insidious
power, was withering the mother's life, before the
eyes of her child, and from the bed of suffering she now
looked darkly forward. Her feeble fingers could no longer
ply the needle, and her dim eyes seemed dazzled by the
white cambric. Cold grew the widow's heart in foreboding
for her daughter. But God had kept that daughter,
thus far, and His Mightiness still overlooked her
footsteps.

Blessed is the heart of the young, loving, and hopeful,
even amid sorrow and gloom. When the widow's weak
hands could no longer toil, the daughter's industry took
the place of hers. School was resigned, and with it all
the charms of school society, prized the more by Emily

because so unlike the surroundings of Foley's Barracks.
Now, instead of tripping blithely away, with ready morning
lessons, Emily hurried, though with no less blithe a
footstep, to a hot, narrow back parlor, where, with half a
dozen pale-faced girls, happy, like herself, to be employed,
she plied the busy needle twelve hours every day, earning
a scanty pittance by incessant work. But she hoped—
toiled and hoped; for she was but a novice as yet, and
flattered her young fancy with the prospect of soon ending
her probationary apprenticeship, and becoming worthy
to receive the wages of a finished workwoman. She knew
not how many thousands, versed in all the mysteries of
fashion's paraphernalia, had hoped unto despair, and sunk
by the wayside to death, perhaps to shame. Well for
Emily that she was yet hopeful and ignorant. Sorrow
and knowledge of good and evil are learned soon enough
in this world of ours.

Sorrow, indeed! when the milliner's apprentice was
called away from her task, by a message from her mother,
who, poor sufferer! had concealed from her the rapid
progress which disease was making; choosing much rather
to dwell upon every indication of favorable change!
Sorrow, indeed! as the grey dawn of a wintry morning,
struggling into the dim chamber, discovered the poor girl,
after a night of watching, bowing herself, weeping, at her
dying mother's bedside.

During that long night, while fierce snow-gusts were
driving through deserted streets, the young girl had been
kneeling, with hushed breath; sustaining with one slight
arm the feeble head so soon to be at rest for ever; and

listening to the hard, dry cough and thick breathing which
shook the laboring breast. Long and wearisomely had
the hours dragged on, till now, in the early morning, the
daughter resigned her clasp of the hot hand she had been
holding, and with an anxious glance at the widow's closed
eyes, rose from her bent posture, and drew the white curtain
of the window. The coals were blackening in the
grate, and Emily's limbs felt chilled and cramped. She
shuddered as she looked out upon the great drifts of snow
in the streets, and saw, above, how the house-smokes rose
sluggishly upward from chimney-tops, as if half-congealed
by the keen frost. Then, returning to the hearth, she
gathered its few decaying embers together, essaying to
rekindle the fire; and as she did so, her mother stirred in
the bed, and turned her face upon the pillow. Emily was
by her side, in a moment, supporting the drooping head.

A history of grief was legible in the Widow Marvin's
countenance, written out in sharp furrows and scored by
worn lines; poverty, sickness, the world's neglect, had
stamped their separate impress; but enduring patience,
and the meekness that forgives, had mellowed all into
gentle resignation, even though death's strange seal was
already pressing on the pallid brow its awful finis.

“My Emily!”

Her daughter's arms twined about the widow's neck,
her lips pressed the bony forehead, cold and clammy with
the dews of dissolution. “Mother! mother!” was all the
poor girl could utter, her cheek growing ashy, and the
blood shrinking to her heart.

“My child! I am dying!”

“No, no, mother!—no! don't say so! Oh! you must
not leave me!”

“My poor Emily!” murmured the widow, folding her
daughter, with a convulsive effort, to her bosom. “I had
hoped to be spared—a little longer; but His will, my
child, must be done!”

Emily could not speak; she only bent her head upon
the pillow, while agonized sobs broke incessantly from her
breast.

“Oh! Heaven look down upon my child!” cried the
widow, clasping her attenuated hands around Emily's
neck. “God of the orphan! have pity upon her! Thou
who temperest the wind to the shorn lamb! be her consoler
and strength!”

“Mother! mother!”

“Pray with me, Emily!”

The broken accents of a dying orison quivered on the
Widow Marvin's lips, mingled with her child's sobbing
supplication. From that dim and cold room of Foley's
Barracks, the murmurs of devotion arose, reaching far
above minarets and cathedral towers, to the throne of
Him in whom the widow hoped. When the last syllable
trembled and rose solemnly, Emily lifted her cheek from
the bosom where it had rested, and gazed through blinding
tears upon her mother's face; but she beheld no light
in the fixed eyes: naught but a smile—bright flicker of a
departing spirit—upon the marble lip. She unclasped
the thin arms that had enfolded her neck, and, as they fell
inertly upon the bed, Emily knew that she was henceforth
an orphan.

But, even in that moment, when the sense of irremediable
affliction fell heaviest, and the unutterable idea of
loneliness settled gloomily around her, the influence of a
mother's dying prayer seemed to surround the child, as
with sustaining wings of angels; its cadences, though
hushed in death, still vibrated in her memory, but more
like triumphal numbers now—the strains of an ascending
seraph—than the broken whispers of a daughter of poverty,
perishing amid the wilderness of a tenant-house.

Blessed be prayer for evermore! Though thoughtless
scoffers, and cold reasoners upon subtle abstrusities, sneer
at the offering of a sacrifice like this of words—though
shrinking fatalists aver that prayer is powerless to unfix
the laws of destiny—yet are they but fools in their icy
philosophy! Prayer unburdens the heart, like the prophet's
rod, cleaving men's rocky natures, till the waters
of refreshing peace gush forth. Better wrest a cup of
water from the parched lip of a desert wanderer—rather
sever the cord by which a drowning victim essays to climb
the toppling cliff above him—than dash from a mourner's
breast the holy solace of an earnest prayer, or that soothing
trust in the efficacy of adjuration which sustains the
soul when all else crumbles, quicksand-like, beneath it!

A knock at the door startled the orphan, and rising, she
opened it to a short, portly man, clad in a glossy suit of
broadcloth, his head covered by a very shining hat, and
his feet encased in patent-leather boots, with sandals
bound over them. He held a gold-headed cane in one
hand, and in the other a blank-book. His black satin
vest was crossed by a thick gold watch-guard, and heavy

seals of the same material dangled from his fob. Altogether,
the appearance of this visitor was unexceptionably
respectable; nevertheless, Emily's pale cheek grew whiter
as she recognized him.

“Ah, miss! Good morning! Great snow last night!
horrid walking!” Saying this, the patent-leather boots,
with sandals, were violently stamped upon the entry
floor, to disengage the muddy snow that adhered to
them.

“Please, Mr. Jobson—if you would call again,” began
the young girl.

“What, little lady—isn't your ma in? Well, no matter!
I'll have a chat with you! I like to chat with you,
you know,” said the man, with a leering smile, as he familiarly
tapped Emily under the chin, still stamping the
patent-leather boots, with a loud noise.

“But, sir,”—began the orphan, and burst into tears
that checked her further speech.

“You're always so neat and clean here, little lady—
does one good to see it! tenants are generally the filthiest
people! but your mother's the pattern of cleanness! Yes,
and industrious, too, is the widow. Dare say she's been
out to her work an hour ago! always punctual with her
rent! Never gives a bit of trouble! There, now! I'm
tol-lol, and ready for a chat with you, Emily.”

With these words, the portly man in broadcloth bustled
into the apartment, past the weeping girl, and was about
to seat himself complacently in the widow's vacant rocking-chair,
when he chanced to cast his glance to the bed
which stood in one corner, and there beheld a sight that

caused his apoplectic face to lose for a moment its usual
scarlet tinge.

“What!—dead!” he cried, starting back, and almost
falling over the chair.

A fresh sobbing burst from Emily, as the poor girl
tottered towards the bedside, attested the certainty of her
orphanhood.

“Bad business!—uncommon afflicting dispensation!”
said the visitor, drawing out a red silk handkerchief, and
rubbing his rubicund face, in much agitation. “When did
it occur?”

“My mother has just gone!” answered Emily, looking
up into the man's face, with an expression so desolate that
it might have awakened the sympathy of a savage.

“Poor thing!” said the visitor, “I am really shocked—
greatly shocked! So unexpected! Here one day, and
gone the next. Such is life! Have you sent for anybody?”

“'Twas so sudden, sir—and last night the storm was so
bad, I could not leave her, to go for Dr. Cannon! I had
a mind to call Mrs. Dumsey, who lives on the second
floor, front; but, indeed, I was afraid to leave mother
even for a moment.”

“Yes! Mrs. Dumsey — a very good woman! — pays
promptly! By-the-by, miss, your mother was quite industrious—must
have saved something—eh?”

“What, sir?” inquired Emily, seeming not to understand
the remark.

“Laid by a little, to make you kind o' comfortable, I
hope,” pursued Mr. Jobson.

“Did Mr. Jobson mean that mother had money laid
by?”

“That's it!—Hope so!”

“We were very rich!” replied the young girl, earnestly;
as she opened a trunk near the bed, and drew forth a
small purse of faded-cotton; “not in money, Mr. Jobson
—but in contentment! Here is the sum of our worldly
wealth.” As she spoke, Emily emptied the contents of
her purse upon the table, before her visitor. It was not
much—a double eagle would have paid dearly for the
crumpled notes and silver that Mr. Jobson saw.

“Is that all?” he asked with emphasis. “About
enough for funeral expenses!”

“And the rent, Mr. Jobson,” rejoined Emily, as if she
read the man's unspoken thoughts.

“O—miss—I beg! don't trouble yourself!—make your
mind quite easy on that head. Any time, you know!
We are old friends—eh, little lady?”

Jobson smiled, as he uttered this, in a manner that
caused Emily to drop her eyes to the floor, while a sensation
of terror crept through her frame.

“If you would be so good as to speak to Mrs. Dumsey,
when you go down, sir,” —

“Certainly, miss; and anything I can do, you know,”
returned Jobson, approaching, and taking Emily's small
fingers in his own. “I had a great respect for your
mother, you know.” He squeezed her hand, as he spoke,
and patted the glossy ringlets that hung upon her white
neck. “You'll find me a good friend, never fear.”

“You'll not forget to speak to Mrs. Dumsey,” said

Emily, shrinking from Jobson's touch, and anxious that
he would depart. “She will help me, greatly.”

“Yes, little lady,” said the man, with a look more of
admiration than of pity, upon the changing countenance
of the orphan. Then, reluctantly turning away, he continued:
“Always call on me, you know! Good-by! I'll
be around soon again! I'm your best friend, you know.”

Jobson then rubbed his crimson face with the handkerchief
of similar color, and, with a bow and smile—both
unheeded by the orphan, whose face had again sunk beside
her mother's—stamped his patent-leather boots, sandals,
and gold-headed cane out into the passageway, and thence
down the narrow stairs. Emily breathed more freely
when he had gone.

Mrs. Dumsey's room was a small one, with the inevitable
dark, unventilated closet adjoining. It was kept tolerably
clean, though four children occupied it, sleeping
with their mother on a capacious feather bed, the relic of
Mrs. Dumsey's better days, which she hoped to be able to
leave, as an heirloom, to her eldest daughter. Mrs.
Dumsey's offspring comprised three girls and one boy, the
latter her youngest, very dirty, and a great favorite of
his mother. He was eight years old, and his sisters were
respectively, ten, twelve, and thirteen. The room which
constituted their parlor and kitchen by day, and their
bedroom by night, where the rickety old sofa-bedstead was
disposed for their accommodation, had been the limit of
their domestic experience, since infancy; for Mrs. Dumsey,
after the Widow Marvin, was the next oldest tenant of
Foley's Barracks. In that one small room—for the inner

closet was used as a sort of pantry, and receptacle for
odds and ends—the mother had resided seven years with
a husband, and after he had enlisted as a soldier, and died
by disease and wounds in a Mexican hospital, had reared
to their present age the four children left to her. A
small stipend from government, in the shape of forty dollars
per annum, the half-pay pension due to the widow of
a soldier, assisted wonderfully in eking out her living,
earned by watching as a nurse and assistant at funerals.
Her three daughters were slatternly and ignorant, her
darling Tommy a most malicious urchin, the terror of the
tenant-house, on account of his multitudinous tricks, and
herself a good-hearted, moralizing sort of a woman, slave
to her children, and continually getting into disturbances
with her neighbors on their account. Mrs. Dumsey stood
at her door, as the gentleman in patent-leathers was
descending to her landing.

“Morning, Mrs. Dumsey! Ah! there you are, with
your nice family—Tommy and his fine sisters! Eh,
Tommy,” —

“Speak to the gentleman, Tom! Don't you know
Mr. Jobson?”

“O yes, Tommy, you know me, you know,” said Mr.
Jobson, making a pleasant grimace at the dirty-faced
boy, who thereupon walked cautiously up to the gentleman,
and planted a well-directed kick upon the instep of
the patent-leather boot. Mr. Jobson uttered an exclamation
of pain and anger, and raised his cane, at which
motion Master Tommy set up a most ear-piercing howl,
and took refuge behind the squat person of his mamma.

“Excuse him, Mr. Jobson; the poor child hasn't had
his breakfast, and is cross.”

“Yes, and I want my breakfast!” cried the boy, plucking
at his mother's gown, and making indescribable
mouths, under her arm, at Mr. Jobson.

“Here—you! Matilda, pacify Tommy!” said the mother,
getting very red, and beckoning to her eldest daughter,
who hereat approached, and seized her brother by his
collar, upon which he kicked backward with fearful intent,
but found his foot caught by his dexterous sister, who forthwith
trundled him off in triumph to the pantry, where a
succession of yells bore witness to her success in pacifying
him. The remaining two girls stood staring at Jobson,
and gnawing their hands at the same time. They were
half-clad, their clothes ragged, and falling from their
shoulders, but, like the eldest, they had pretty faces, and
appeared healthy.

“Here's the rent, Mr. Jobson, all rolled up in half-dollars,
legal money,” said Mrs. Dumsey, who prided herself
on her method of doing business according to law, a fact
which no neighbor dared to dispute, as it was well known
the good woman had more to do with gentlemen of the
legal profession (through her pension matters) than any
other person in Foley's Barracks.

“All in half-dollars, eh?” said Mr. Jobson, receiving
the money, which he counted, with the remark, “though
you're always correct, you know, Mrs. Dumsey,” and then
produced a ready-signed receipt from the book which
he carried. “And now we're both correct!” he concluded.

“Mommy, she's a-pullin' my hair!” cried the heir of the
family, screaming from the place of his captivity.

“It's a lie—I'm a-tryin' to comb it,” was the sisterly
response.

Another howl followed this contradictory remark, and
then a brief conflict was heard, immediately after which
Tommy appeared in flight, pursued by his sister, whose
frock had been torn from neck to skirt in the struggle.

“O, I'm worried to death, as I'm a livin' woman, with
them innocents!” cried Mrs. Dumsey, apparently much
vexed. “You, Tom! I'll skin you! Matilda, why don't
you pacify him?”

“Try it yourself, and see how easy it is,” replied the
daughter, and then sulked away in a corner; but was
presently brought forward again, by an exclamation of
surprise from her parent.

“Dead! you don't tell!—poor critter! and that g'rl,
Emily, all alone! Gracious me! I must run up there,
this very minute!”

“Do so, Mrs. Dumsey. No doubt, she's in great distress.”

“Right straight away!” returned the neighbor; and, as
Mr. Jobson, his boots, and cane, commenced to step towards
another room, Mrs. Dumsey ran up stairs, followed by the
three listening girls, with great clamor; while the unhappy
Tom, forsaken by his relatives, threw himself upon the
door-sill, and began a savage series of kicks against the
wall, at the same time pealing forth a succession of aboriginal
war-whoops, which presently brought all the surrounding
tenants to their doors.

Mr. Jobson punctuated each step he took with a stroke
of his iron-feruled cane upon the flooring, until he reached
a room at the opposite extremity of the passageway, and
there knocked with the golden head. A woman about
twenty-five years of age, once undoubtedly handsome,
but with marks of dissipation on her features, which
were rouged and powdered thickly, opened the door to
him.

“Ah!—morning!” said Mr. Jobson.

“Walk in!” responded the woman, testily, and with no
mark of deference. “I suppose you're after the rent.
Here, Freid!—the landlord!”

The last words were addressed to a man who stood in the
middle of the room, clad in close-fitting flesh-colored shirt
and tights. This man was very stout and muscular, his
neck short and powerful as a bull's, his breast bulging
and head small, covered with short, curly black hair, while
a beard of the same description almost concealed his face.
He was fixed, with legs astride, his arms extended, and
sustaining a young girl, who balanced upon the wrist with
one small white foot, while the other pointed, in a sort
of aerial pas, to the ceiling. Mr. Jobson paused, as he
beheld this spectacle, astonished both at the situation and
surpassing loveliness of the posturante.

And well might he be surprised; for certainly no
Grecian sculptor ever fancied a more beautiful mould than
that of this female child, scarce ten years of age, who,
with no article of clothing upon her polished limbs but a
gauze robe or petticoat, was practising some pose with the
muscular fellow who sustained her. The tips of her left

taper fingers were just clasped by her companion's left
hand, while the right held the toes of her extended foot.
Her hair, which was of a pale golden hue, hung in thick-clustering
ringlets upon her rounded shoulders; her eyes,
half-covered by long lashes, were yet sufficiently open to
permit the lustre of a dreamy blue to contrast with the
clear red and white of her complexion, and the full crimson
of her pouting lips. Altogether, she might have been
a model for some Catholic sculptor, picturing a childish
saint, or newly-created angel, half-reclined on air. Mr.
Jobson did not, of course, imagine all this poetic nonsense,
but he could not help murmuring, as he looked—“What
a doosed pretty girl, to be sure!”

The posturer lowered his arm, and his beautiful pupil
alighted on the floor, with scarce the sound of a footfall,
and, turning a pirouette, at the same time throwing a
bold glance at the visitor, skipped through the open door
of their dark bedroom. The posturer fixed a pair of
sleepy eyes upon Mr. Jobson, and mumbled some words in
broken English, which the agent appeared to interpret as
a demand concerning the amount of rent due.

“Six dollars—in advance, you know! you paid three
weeks when you took the rooms, and now it's even months.
Six dollars, if you please.”

“What does he say?” asked the athlete, turning to his
female companion, and speaking in an odd mixture of
English and some other dialect. The woman muttered
something, that resulted in the production, on the part
of the man, of an iron snuff-box, wherein were some
greasy notes, which he handed to the woman. She then

tendered the required sum to Jobson, who smiled complacently,
as he returned a receipt, and said:

“Hope you're nicely suited—everything satisfactory,
mem? Like to make tenants comfortable, you know.”

“Comfortable!” echoed the woman, with a short laugh.
“In this den!”

“For the matter of that, mem,” rejoined Mr. Jobson,
rather tartly, “other people lives in this house.”

“Lives!” responded the woman, with a sneer; “better
say, rots—dies—you'll hit it nearer! What with filth,
vermin, and smoke, it's enough to breed the pest at any
time.”

“Indeed, mem”—began Mr. Jobson, in an expostulatory
tone; but the woman cut him short, exclaiming—

“You've got your rent—what more d'ye want?”

The agent hesitated, and cast a look towards the back
chamber in which had vanished the lovely vision that a
few moments since seemed to illume the dingy room; but
he met the posturer's sluggish eyes fixed on him, with a
surly expression, and relinquished his half-formed intention
of inquiring concerning the young girl. However, as if
anxious to leave a favorable impression, he ventured, as he
turned away, to say—

“Anything I can do, you know, to make you comfortable,
you know,” —

But no reply was vouchsafed to this magnanimous offer
on the part of Mr. Jobson, save, indeed, a decided slam of
the door after his emerging form; whereupon he marched
away, with dignity much hurt, emphasizing his rising feelings
by downward strokes of the gold-headed cane, to the

infinite terror of delinquent tenants tremblingly awaiting
his advent in various quarters of the alarmed territory
known as Foley's Barracks.

“Who the doose can that handsome child belong to?”
soliloquized Mr. Jobson. “It can't be hers—though it
may be his! Queer individuals, anyway, them model-artists!”