mTTTl T"» T5 Annn lll\7 ^\U1 1 1 1 I h I.I 
 
 THE PROPERTY OF THE 
 
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 eamen's JriettfoSbcidg, 
 
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SEYMOUR DURST 
 
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L I F 
 
 E 
 
 IN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OV 
 "THE OLD WHITE MEETING-HOUKE " 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 
 
 No. 5 3 BROAD IV A V . 
 
■PS 
 L5 
 
 t 
 
 Enterod according to Act of Congress, in the vear 1846, 
 By ROBERT CAR" P.R. 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of tAe United State*, 
 for the Southern District of New 1 ork. 
 
 Stereotyped by Redfleld & Savaf*, 
 13 Chambers street, N. T. 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 The sketches that follow are drawn from 
 life, and there are those who will feel them 
 to be true. They are given to the world 
 that the interior life of the great city may 
 be known to those that read. The lesson 
 will be useful if it rouses the dwellers here 
 to take a livelier interest in devising and 
 executing wise and efficient schemes for the 
 improvement of the vicious and the relief 
 of the suffering. 
 
 A vast amount of sympathy is expended 
 upon the profligate and the poor, which re- 
 sults in no well-considered efforts to do 
 good. This assertion will not be regarded 
 as too strong by those who will explore the 
 haunts of vice and the abodes of poverty 
 
4 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 that abound within the precincts of this 
 metropolis. 
 
 But still another object may be reached 
 by the publication of these sketches : the 
 young in the country may learn the dangers 
 that lurk in the city, and keep away from 
 their reach. Life in the city has a charm 
 that fascinates the distant, and many who 
 have peaceful and happy homes in the se- 
 cluded vales of the country, are often 
 tempted to seek fortune or pleasure here. 
 They make a sad exchange. Peace is there, 
 and plenty and purity: here is labour, temp- 
 tation, and often bitter disappointments and 
 trials, such as are not to be felt in the quiet 
 walks they have forsaken. 
 
 But wherever sin is, there is misery. 
 There is no doubt of this, and as these 
 pages are read, this truth will be illustrated 
 and impressed. That such may be the 
 effect, and that the cause of virtue may be 
 promoted, is the single desire of the writer. 
 
 November, 1846. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Introductory 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Alice Lindon 15 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Henry Newton and his Sister 31 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Simon Wilson, the Drover Boy 55 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Barber Broker.— Isabella 65 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 The Spanish General's Widow 71 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 City Charity 87 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Old Ladies.— The Drunkard's Home 101 
 
 1* 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Hours in a Madhouse 118 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 The Woman who wanted to be turned 138 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Crime in the City 144 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Visit to a Pirate's Cell 152 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Statistics of Vice, and reflections thereon 159 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 A Nocturnal Subterranean Excursion 172 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 Milk in the Metropolis 184 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Fashionable Club-Houses 191 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 The Poor in New York 203 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 Christmas and New Year's 225 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 The Conclusion 234 
 
LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 It does us' good to know what sort of a 
 world we live in. And it has been well 
 and often said, that one half of the world 
 know not how the other half live. Every 
 man for himself, is one of the most popular 
 maxims of the age ; at least, more men act 
 upon it than upon that other a>nd better pre- 
 cept — " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
 thyself." And there is no part of the world 
 where this supreme selfishness is more uni- 
 versal, where it is even a virtue in the eyes 
 of more, than in a great city. You live, 
 and move, and sicken, and die, while your 
 next-door neighbour, perhaps, knows noth- 
 
3 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 ing of you, till he sees the hearse and car- 
 riages at your funeral. 
 
 I heard a story the other day, of a French- 
 man standing on the dock and seeing a man 
 struggling in the water for his life. The 
 man sank and was drowned, and the French- 
 man, in great distress, bewailed his sad fate, 
 and expressed his regret that he had never 
 been introduced to the poor fellow, as he 
 might have saved him if he had only had 
 the honour of his acquaintance. Such 
 Frenchmen as this are very numerous in 
 these parts. And many of them never saw 
 France. Because we have no personal re- 
 lationship, no ties of blood or business to 
 bind us to those about us, and not even the 
 brotherhood of common acquaintance, we 
 let the world look out for itself, while we 
 flatter ourselves that it is of no importance 
 to us what becomes of the rest, if we are 
 but well used. This is the humanity of the 
 city. Well might the poet of Israel ask, 
 " Lord, what is man that thou art mindful 
 of him ?" He is not mindful of his fellow ! 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 9 
 
 He cares not for the misery that weeps at 
 his door, for the poverty that hides in the 
 cellar hard hy the princely mansion in which 
 he dwells, nor the vice that riots around the 
 corner, and makes a hell in his very neigh- 
 bourhood. Provided always, that this mis- 
 ery, and poverty, and vice, will keep still, and 
 make no disturbance ; but, look out there, 
 if wretchedness groans too loudly, or beg- 
 gary becomes too clamorous, or vice too 
 noisy, then our modern philanthropist be- 
 stirs himself, and is wonderfully considerate 
 of the state of things, and of the times, and 
 talks of the need of reform, of systematic 
 benevolence, and a vigilant police, and all 
 that, till he is delivered of the nuisance 
 which he just now endured. It is one of 
 the boasts of our day, that we have an origi- 
 nal plan for doing everything in the right 
 way ; and as all these matters are attended 
 to by associations, there is nothing left for 
 individuals. Of course, they are not under 
 the necessity of troubling themselves about 
 the wants or woes of other people. The 
 
10 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 " Society" will look after that. This is a 
 good, and then there are evils growing out 
 of it. Individual responsibility is merged 
 in the mass, and lost sight of ; but the work 
 is better done, beyond a doubt, than if it 
 were left to the impulses of those who feel. 
 I have no heart to join in the cry now fre- 
 quently raised by our modern reformers 
 against the institutions of society, as if these 
 made paupers and criminals, and then left 
 them to look after themselves. Society is 
 organized well enough. The plan is good, 
 and needs no infusion of Fourierism to 
 make it better. The plan is good, and the 
 body politic will be improved as the Bible 
 is more and more read and believed. But 
 there is a shocking want of humanity, of 
 feeling for one's own kind, in this commu- 
 nity. There's no doubt of it. 
 
 Look at the throngs of the young — 
 "young men and maidens" — flocking in 
 the broadest and slipperiest road that leads 
 to the bottomless pit. You can not step 
 into Broadway after nightfall without seeing 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 11 
 
 them. They are tripping it down to the 
 rayless dungeon of eternal wo, as lightly 
 and madly as if it were not the dance of 
 death ! Thousands of them, ten thousands 
 of them, are within the sound of the fire- 
 bell, and every time it tolls, it sounds the 
 knell of some of their immortal, priceless 
 souls. But who cares ! Who of the un- 
 counted Christians of this proud city has 
 the burden of these wretched candidates for 
 judgment on his conscience? How many 
 of them might say, when the brief career 
 of sin is ended, and grim death dashes their 
 cup of folly to the ground, " No man cared 
 for my soul. 11 
 
 We look at them in the mass. It is not 
 so easy to feel for a crowd as for a single 
 subject of pity. If we should stop one of 
 these children of guilt and shame, and hear 
 her story, we should feel for her. She has 
 or had a mother ; she has a sister ; the 
 hearthstone was bright once with the light 
 of her eye. I have somewhere in my pa- 
 pers a story that, when it was a terrible 
 
12 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 reality before me, made the tears come 
 often, and if you will read it, you shall 
 know more of "life in the city" than now. 
 If you should go down, after dark, into 
 
 that basement, close by the theatre, 
 
 and knock softly at the door, it would be 
 opened quietly, and you should walk by the 
 light of a single lamp, through a long and 
 narrow passage, a slide door would admit 
 you to a room where twenty men are sitting 
 sullenly silent, as if dead. One starts from 
 the table mad with disappointment, and 
 stung with shame, and rushes out of the 
 room. The game goes on. These are gam- 
 blers. This whole row is filled with such 
 saloons as this, and nightly they are haunted 
 by men who play for passion or for gain, 
 " Hells," they are called. A fitter name 
 the language has not. I have a story of 
 one who perished here ; would you like to 
 read it? 
 
 What a city is this ! Somebody has 
 written of London as a great maelstrom in 
 which the young are caught and whirled ; 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 13 
 
 pleased with the giddy rush around the 
 outer circle of this mighty whirlpool, they 
 smile at danger, till at last they are intoxi- 
 cated with the motion, sucked into the aw- 
 ful vortex, dashed upon the fatal rocks, and 
 thrown out upon the surface, bruised and 
 mangled corpses. I would rather speak of 
 New York, under a figure drawn from the 
 borders of our own state. The youth who 
 enters it glides smoothly along, as on a gen- 
 tly descending stream, whose banks are 
 clothed with verdure and gemmed with 
 flowers ; onward and downward floats his 
 bark ; he is in the rapids now, but he loves 
 his danger, hears with mad joy the roar of 
 the mighty cataract below; laughs at the 
 mists that rise like pillars of cloud to warn 
 him that destruction is near ; he plies the 
 oar with fiercer strength, as if the lightning 
 speed of the dashing current were too slow 
 for him ; on, on, down, down ; the brink is 
 gained ; one wild hurrah rises above the tor- 
 rent's voice, and the young voyager makes 
 
 the final, fatal, returnless plunge. 
 
 2 
 
14 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 Keep away from the water, ye youth, 
 who would not perish in the waves. It is 
 no place for you who have a safe and happy 
 home on shore. 
 
 But instead of moralizing any farther, 
 listen to a story of life in the city. If parts 
 of it read like fiction, remember that truth 
 is stranger than fiction, and more full of 
 wisdom. 
 
ALICE LINDON. 
 
 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ALICE LINDON. 
 
 The village in which she was born and 
 where she lived till " sweet sixteen," is on 
 the Connecticut river, but how near its 
 union with the Sound I may not say. Nor 
 does the little cluster of white cottages, one 
 of which was the home of her childhood, 
 scarcely aspire to the name of village. 
 There is the meetinghouse, with a spire 
 pointing to the skies, of which the house of 
 God is the gate ; but the most of the wor- 
 shippers came from the country-side, miles 
 around ; there is a small " inn," where the 
 traveller may stop for rest and refreshment, 
 and there are a few shops to supply the 
 wants of the neighbours ; and then a few 
 neat houses, showing comfort without wealth, 
 
L6 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 peace which is plenty ; and here was the 
 birthplace of Alice Lindon. 
 
 Her own home stood in a sweet cove 
 back from the river, a bosom of water and 
 shore that seemed the very chosen spot for 
 domestic love to hide itself and dwell. A 
 green lawn, with a rude enclosure, stretched 
 in front of the cottage to the shore ; great 
 trees stood around the house, affording 
 fruit and shade, and the soft banks of the 
 stream invited the child of Nature to wan- 
 der on them and enjoy the beauty which 
 the full hand of Nature had spread over 
 the rich and romantic scene. In very child- 
 hood, Alice had discovered a fondness for 
 the charms with which she was surrounded. 
 Long before her mind was expanded by 
 reading, or by intercourse with the world, 
 she had learned to love God's world ; the 
 landscape radiant with his smiles ; the water 
 sparkling in his light by day, and reflecting 
 his stars by night ; the hill and dale that 
 were covered with his bounty and spoke 
 ever of his love : these were the scenes 
 
ALICE L1ND0N. 
 
 17 
 
 with which Alice was familiar and happy 
 in the sunny hours of her childhood. 
 
 The death of her father, when she was 
 but ten years old, left her solely to the care 
 of her widowed mother, and having no 
 brothers or sisters with whom to share her 
 sorrows or the joys of her young heart, she 
 was always with her mother, except when 
 abroad in the fields, or on the banks of the 
 gentle river that ever lay at her feet. Mrs. 
 Lindon had enjoyed the advantages of ed- 
 ucation and society, when she was young, 
 and though her removal to this rural retreat 
 and her straitened circumstances had de- 
 prived her of pleasures for which she had 
 tastes and capacities, she had never de- 
 spaired of training her only child for higher 
 enjoyments and wider usefulness than could 
 be hers in the secluded hamlet where she 
 was born. It had therefore been the aim 
 of Mrs. Lindon, for many years of industry 
 and economy, to lay aside the means to en- 
 able her to give Alice an education, such as 
 should fit her to do good in another sphere. 
 2* 
 
18 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 It was plain to a watchful mother, that 
 there was much in Alice that would attract 
 the attention and secure the admiration of 
 the world, should she enter upon its scenes ; 
 and as the grace of God had never renewed 
 the heart of the sweet girl, it is not strange 
 that Mrs. Lindon should tremble at the 
 thought of sending her away from home at 
 her tender age. For Alice was now sixteen, 
 and had no other means of instruction than 
 her mother and the village-school could 
 give her, and it was important, without any 
 further delay, that she should go abroad to 
 enjoy those advantages which the higher 
 seminaries alone could afford. 
 
 That was an anxious hour, both to mother 
 and daughter, when Alice Lindon took leave 
 
 of the parental roof for the city of , 
 
 where she was to board with a relative of 
 her mother, and attend an excellent school, 
 in which she would have every opportunity 
 of obtaining a finished education, under 
 teachers of wide and well-earned popularity. 
 The first appearance of Alice in the school- 
 
ALICE LINDON. 
 
 19 
 
 room was an era in it. The loveliness of 
 her form and features, the meek simplicity 
 of her manners, fashioned by no rule but 
 the good sense of her mother and her own 
 native gentleness, and with these traits the 
 freedom which life in the country had in- 
 spired, rendered her at once an object of 
 attention, and it was not many days before 
 she was known as the flower of the school. 
 
 The strong anxieties of the mother were 
 in a great measure relieved when she heard 
 that Alice was a favorite with her teachers, 
 and an object of solicitude and kindness 
 with all who became acquainted with her. 
 Yet these were the very evidences that she 
 was in danger. Alice's heart was open as 
 the day ; her spirit leaped at the voice of 
 friendship, and she had never known in the 
 sanctuary of her childhood and the purity 
 of her early home, that there was deceit in 
 this fair world ; and now that she was on 
 the gayer walks of life, it seemed that she 
 had found more to love and trust, and she 
 learned to be happier than on the banks of 
 
20 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 the river and under the trees of her native 
 village. And true it is that danger often 
 lies where we least suspect its presence. 
 Mrs. Lindon's friend, who had offered Alice 
 a home with her while she should be at 
 school, had done a similar favour to another 
 friend who had wished to place a son at 
 college, and in the fondness of her heart 
 she had thought that Edward Murray would 
 prove a pleasant companion and friend to 
 Alice Lindon, during the time that they 
 made her house their home. 
 
 It is not my inclination, nor does it com- 
 port with my notions of propriety, to follow 
 in detail the facts that marked the year 
 
 which Alice Lindon spent in . Her 
 
 new acquaintance, Edward Murray, was a 
 spoiled child from New York, a model of 
 virtue in the eyes of his doating parents, 
 and a " bad boy," as everybody else knew 
 full well. He had trifled away his early 
 years in boarding-schools, till he was now 
 eighteen, and had been at home enough in 
 the city to learn the world, to love many of 
 
ALICE LINDON. 
 
 its vices, which in secret he indulged, while 
 to his parents he seemed all that their hearts 
 desired. His free and easy manners ren- 
 dered his society agreeable, and practice 
 had made him early perfect in those soft ac- 
 complishments that secure a young man a 
 cordial welcome in the social circle. 
 
 It was a new w r orld to Alice, when the 
 winning voice of Edward Murray whispered 
 in her ear that he loved her ; she had heard 
 his praises from her young companions, and 
 thought he was a worthy young man, who 
 took pleasure in reading to her and her aunt, 
 who was happy when he could aid her in 
 her lessons, or escort her to and from church 
 of an evening. All this was very well, and 
 she thought no more of it, than of other 
 kindnesses which everybody seemed glad 
 to show her. But her young heart fluttered 
 anxiously when Edward breathed into her 
 ear the gentle confession that she was dear 
 to him, and that he would live to make her 
 happy. She believed him, and why should 
 
22 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 she not ? No one had ever deceived her, 
 and why should she doubt ? 
 
 But he did deceive her, to her ruin. Un- 
 der the flattering pretext of an invitation to 
 his father's house, she followed him to the 
 city of New York t and there he left her in 
 wretchedness and shame ; without a shelter 
 or a friend. 
 
 This is crowding into a few lines what 
 would naturally fill many of these pages, 
 and make a tale of sin and misery to harrow 
 the heart. 
 
 Alice woke to a sense of her utter aban- 
 donment. A stranger in a great city, and 
 without the means of flying from it, what 
 should she do "? She thought of home ! O 
 that she were there in the innocence of her 
 childhood, happy in the smiles of those she 
 loved, thoughtless of care, and with a heart 
 flowing over ever with the purest joy ! She 
 thought of her mother ! How she would 
 love to fall on her breast and confess her 
 sins and be forgiven ! Before this, and that 
 mother must have heard that she had been 
 
ALICE LINDON. 
 
 23 
 
 deceived and lost; and could a mother live, 
 with the terrible consciousness that her 
 daughter, her idol, her all, had fallen into 
 the snare of the destroyer ? Wrung with 
 anguish, and distracted with such thoughts 
 as these that crowded upon her brain, Alice 
 was ready to hasten to her mother, and bury 
 herself in the unfathomed depths of a moth- 
 er's love. But how could she go, and ought 
 she to expect forgiveness if she did ? 
 
 In the midst of this conflict of soul, she 
 is found by a minister of vice, one whose 
 business it is to find victims for the daily 
 sacrifice on the altars of sin in the gay and 
 guilty city of New York. A shelter was 
 offered, and that was more than Alice had. 
 Again the wiles of the wicked were thrown 
 around her, and the prey was easy. Down 
 the dark road of guilt and shame she trav- 
 elled swiftly — a sight to make the angels 
 weep ! 
 
 Oh ! if there was sorrow in heaven when 
 the pure spirits that shone with celestial 
 brightness around the spotless throne were 
 
24 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITT. 
 
 seduced to sin and hell ; if the angels that 
 stood steadfast in their integrity wept, when 
 those they loved broke away from their holy 
 worship and wrapped their seraphic charms 
 in the robes of the damned, may we not 
 weep when such as Alice Lindon fall ! 
 God have mercy on her; though, alas, how 
 true that such as she, like angels, fall to 
 rise again no more ! Her steps take hold 
 on hell ! 
 
 ######** 
 Three years pass away. "In my rounds 
 of duty," says a city minister, who furnishes 
 the facts, "I was walking in one of the mis- 
 erable streets of the city, when a woman 
 came up to me, and asked if I would call 
 and see a girl that was sick and likely to 
 die. I told her to lead the way, and I 
 would follow her at once. 
 
 " She turned into a narrow alley between 
 two houses of doubtful reputation, and by 
 the back way led me in and up two flights 
 of stairs to a little attic chamber. It was 
 not a comfortless room : the floor had a 
 
ALICE LINDON. 
 
 25 
 
 strip of carpet reaching from the door to 
 the bed ; a chair or two stood there, and 
 the faded curtains and broken mirror were 
 signs of what would be called the ' shabby 
 genteel.' The woman who acted as my 
 guide had told me, on my way up stairs, 
 that 'the sick girl had been suddenly taken 
 with a fever, and they thought of having her 
 sent to the poorhouse ; but she begged so 
 hard to stay, and seemed like to die so soon, 
 that they thought they would wait a little 
 and see. Sometimes she seems to be ra- 
 ving, and goes on like mad about her moth- 
 er, and all that ; but, poor things, they all 
 cry when they come to be sick, and want 
 to go home and die.' 
 
 " Stretched on the bed, with a flushed 
 cheek, and a wildly-flashing, brilliant eye, 
 lay a young woman who, it was plain to 
 see, had been a beauty in her day. 
 
 " She turned her face toward the wall as 
 I entered, and shut her eyes ; but the tears 
 would find their way through the closed 
 3 
 
26 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 lids, and I saw the pilovvs had been wet with 
 her weeping before I came. 
 
 " ' Here's the minister,' said my guide ; 
 1 you wanted to see him, and T just asked 
 him to call, as I saw him going along the 
 street.' 
 
 " ' O, the minister, is it ; I am so glad 
 he is come. O can't you do something for 
 me, for my poor soul ? I shall die and go 
 to hell, and I ought to go to hell ! What 
 shall I do V 
 
 " She paused, and turned her full eyes 
 upon me, with an imploring look that went 
 to my heart. An image of despair ! A 
 lost one ! I thought of the ' archangel 
 ruined,' in Milton ! and the hopelessness 
 of the case before me seemed to defy the 
 words of consolation which it is so sweet to 
 offer to the dying. But I would try. I 
 thought of the thief on the cross ; of the 
 Magdalene in the gospel, from whom seven 
 devils were cast by the power of the same 
 Saviour whom I could preach to this pos- 
 sessed; and I began — 
 
ALICE LINDON. 
 
 27 
 
 " 1 You have heard of the way to find for- 
 giveness through the Lord Jesus Christ,' 
 I asked, by way of introducing the subject. 
 
 " ' O, yes. When I was a little girl at 
 home, my mother used — ' and she could 
 go no further, but burst into a flood of im- 
 passioned tears. 
 
 " 1 Then you have a mother — what is 
 your name ?' 
 
 " She soon became more composed, and 
 on my again asking of her early history, 
 she gave me the facts which are mentioned 
 in the previous part of this sketch. 
 
 " This was Alice Lindon ; and here was 
 the idol of a fond mother, the flower of the 
 school, and now a worn and wretched thing, • 
 cast out of the world's sympathies, and dy- 
 ing in misery, to meet misery ineffable in a 
 world of wo. Poor girl ! My heart ached 
 for her, and I asked again if her mother 
 knew where she was. 
 
 " 1 No, sir. I came to this city from 
 
 , three years ago, and if my mother 
 
 has tried to find me, as I know she has, it 
 
2S 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 has done no good. I have often thought 
 of writing to her ; but I was so wicked that 
 I could not bear to tell her where I was, it 
 would be so much worse than to think me 
 dead. Dead ! dead ! yes, I shall soon be 
 dead, and then where will my poor soul be?' 
 
 " With the simplicity and solemn ear- 
 nestness that the time and the circumstan- 
 ces seemed to demand, I then preached re- 
 pentance to this perishing sinner. She 
 drank in the words, as the words of eternal 
 life. The truth seemed familiar, as if the 
 memory of things past were coming back, 
 and a ray of hope was rising on the gloom 
 of her dark spirit. When I had spoken 
 of sin and its just demerit — of the wrath of 
 God and the curse of the law, which con- 
 demns the sinner to everlasting death, I ad- 
 ded, * But you know it is a faithful saying, 
 that Jesus Christ came into the world to 
 save even the chief of sinners.' 
 
 " 1 W^hat is that,' she said ; ' please to 
 repeat those words again. I have heard 
 them before.' 
 
ALICE LINDON. 
 
 20 
 
 " I told her they were the words of the 
 Bible which she had often read and heard, 
 and they were the words on which now de- 
 pends the salvation of her precious soul. 
 Vile as she had been, the fulness of Christ's 
 love would meet her case, if she would trust 
 in it. 
 
 " Having exhausted all my strength of 
 persuasion, and having conversed with her 
 until it was evident that her ow«n strength 
 would not allow me to prolong the inter- 
 view, I prayed with her and left her. The 
 servant woman who had brought me up, 
 showed me the way out, and I besought 
 her to make the last days of the poor thing 
 as comfortable as she could. 
 
 " 1 She wont last long,' said she ; 'she'll 
 get a raving in the night, and, like as any 
 way, drop right off in a minute.' 
 
 " True enough. J was haunted all night 
 with thoughts of the blighted soul of that 
 once lovely and lost child, and the very 
 next day made a visit to the house. 
 
 " The woman met me in the alley, and 
 3* 
 
30 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITT. 
 
 said : ' It is all up with her. She died in 
 the night, screaming for her mother.' 
 
 " They sent for a coroner, I believe, and 
 the almshouse department sent her frail body 
 to the Potter's field." 
 
 A sad tale. But it has itself repeated in 
 hundreds of cases every year. There is 
 misery in this world that we know nothing 
 of. There are hearts now breaking, which 
 never find sympathy in ours, for we know 
 not of their sorrows. But in the midst of 
 us are children of wretchedness, who weep 
 in secret, and die in secret, and on their 
 wounds the oil of mercy never comes. 
 
 Sin is its source. The way of transgres- 
 sors is hard. Jt may seem fair and right, 
 but its end is death, its end is hell. 
 
 The path of virtue is peace. It leads to 
 love and heaven ; it is a bright way; its 
 flowers fade not ; its waters are sweet, and 
 pure, and perennial. Angels are in it, the 
 guardian spirits of the young who walk in 
 it ; and God our Saviour holds the pilgrim 
 in his hand, and guides him up to glory. 
 
HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 31 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 
 
 It is nearly a year since — it was late in 
 the autumn of last year — that I was walk- 
 ing down M street late in the evening. 
 
 The night was bitterly cold ; a winter storm 
 just struggling on; the very night when a 
 man likes to be snug in his own bed at home. 
 Yet it does make him easy in the cold to 
 think that a glowing grate will smile on him 
 shortly, and a warm room make him forget 
 the blasts of a damp, cold night. It must 
 be very hard to be poor in the city, to have 
 no well-filled coal-hole, nor any grate to 
 huddle over when the stinging frost finds its 
 way to your bones. It must be very hard. 
 
 I was hastening homeward, and had taken 
 this obscure street as a short-cut — my cloak 
 drawn closely around my face to shield it 
 
32 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 from the driving wind and the sleet that 
 every now and then rattled against the houses, 
 when a feeble tremulous voice fell on my ear. 
 Opening my cloak, and pushing up my hat 
 to hear what was said, I perceived a young 
 lady closely wrapped in shawl and hood, 
 who spoke to me again: — 
 
 "Sir, can you tell me which is No. 26 
 of this street?" 
 
 "I think I can find it for you," said I, 
 "but are you sure that you are in the street 
 you are looking for ? This is a rough place 
 for you to be in alone at this time of night." 
 
 "I know it," she replied, "but I have 
 business here that would take me into a 
 worse place than this, could I only find the 
 object of my search." 
 
 Of course I was too much interested in 
 the deep earnestness of her tone, the evident 
 sincerity of her purpose, and doubtless too 
 curious as to the errand that brought her 
 there, to hesitate a moment about offering 
 to aid her in finding the number for which 
 she required. Walking up a flight of steps 
 
HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 33 
 
 by the nearest lamp, I discovered that we 
 were half a mile from the place she was 
 seeking, as she had come to the wrong end 
 of the street; but it was right on my way, 
 and I therefore was unable to persuade my- 
 self into a bit of romantic benevolence in 
 offering to show her the house. We walk- 
 ed on together. And I remarked, for the 
 sake of saying something: — 
 
 " Certainly you can not be very familiar 
 with the city, or you would be afraid to be 
 out after dark in this vicinity." 
 
 "O," said she, "I see that you will not 
 believe that I have anything good in view, 
 unless I tell you the dreadful business that 
 calls me here. You spoke so kindly to me, 
 that I felt it safe to trust myself to your 
 direction, and now I could tell you my 
 trouble." 
 
 "I would not for the world have you do 
 violence to your sense of propriety in men- 
 tioning to a stranger what he has no right to 
 know ; but if I could be of any service to 
 you, if your errand is of such a nature that 
 
34 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 my attention would be any relief to your 
 feelings, it will give me real pleasure to as- 
 sist you." 
 
 A sudden thought struck her. " You 
 can : I was wondering how I should get in, 
 when I found the house, but if you are at 
 home in the city, you can perhaps help me." 
 
 " Cheerfully," said I; "proceed with 
 your story, as we shall soon be there." 
 
 " I am going for my brother," she re- 
 marked. "He was to have been home at 
 ten o'clock, but he did not come, and I 
 waited till eleven, and as he did not return, 
 I am going to find him. He has got into 
 the way of playing billiards lately, and sev- 
 eral times he has been out almost all night, 
 and when he has come in, he is in a dread- 
 ful state. He has promised me often that 
 he never would do so again, and has told 
 me where it is that he has been in the habit 
 of going, and I am afraid he is there now. 
 He seems to have such a passion for play, 
 that he will go, though I think he tries hard 
 sometimes to get over it." 
 
HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 35 
 
 We walked on in silence, while I thought 
 of the whole story of wretchedness and ruin 
 in that short narrative. She had given me 
 the outline of it only. I could fill it up 
 without her aid, it was so like so many that 
 I had heard before. It will help the reader 
 to feel the sequel, if I here mention what 
 was afterward related to me by this new 
 companion of my night walk. 
 
 It was the same story that you have read. 
 Perhaps you know it already, or another 
 like it. Henry Newton was the son of a 
 country merchant, and one or two visits 
 with his father to the city to buy goods, had 
 given him a taste for the freer life that was 
 to be led in its gayer streets, and he grew 
 sick of the counter and the country al- 
 together. He was nearly a man in his years, 
 and thought he should prefer to go into busi- 
 ness in the great city, where fortunes were 
 soon made, and then he would come back 
 into the country, and settle. An easy fa- 
 ther yielded to his son's importunities, and 
 made arrangements with an old and well- 
 
36 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 known firm in New York, with which he 
 had long done business, to take Henry into 
 their store ; for though he had no relish for 
 the confinement of business there was nc 
 other way of gratifying his desire for the 
 city. But were there no other ties than 
 those of home to keep this youth away from 
 the great metropolis ? 
 
 Henry had one more call to make before 
 he could leave the village. Mary Wilton 
 had been his friend from childhood. He 
 had grown up by her side ; had played with 
 her every day of his life almost, at school 
 and at home, Saturday afternoons always ; 
 had carried her basket, helped her over the 
 fences, made all her quarrels his, and as 
 they grew nearer and nearer to the period 
 of youth, she had seemed less like his sister 
 and more like one dearer than a sister. Hen- 
 ry thought he loved her, and that he could 
 never live without her, and never, till he 
 had a taste of the city, did he dream of any 
 pleasure that had not Mary Wilton for its 
 light and joy. He was now on his way to 
 
HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 37 
 
 bid her farewell, and had never thought till 
 that moment how hard it would be to part 
 with the friend of his childhood and youth; 
 his heart was sad, and he was wishing that 
 he had said nothing about the city, but had 
 lived always in the same street with Mary 
 Wilton. He found her in tears, and not 
 very sorry was he thus to find her. It was 
 a fond assurance that she loved him ; he 
 was happy in the thought that she would be 
 his when he should return from the city, 
 and claim her for his own. 
 
 u Then why must you go?" she asked, 
 as he told her he was sorry that the hour of 
 parting had come at last. " Why leave us 
 and our sweet home for strange faces and 
 strange places? Why will you go ?" 
 
 " We shall never be anything if we stay 
 here," he replied. "There is nothing to 
 be made in the way of business; but a few 
 years in New York, if I am successful, will 
 put us in the way of wealth, and then I can 
 give my Mary such a home as she deserves." 
 
 " I want no better home than this, or even 
 
38 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITT. 
 
 one more humble would answer could I but 
 share it with you," said Mary, and she wept 
 at the boldness of her speech, which was 
 in fact a fuller declaration of her own heart 
 than she had ever ventured to make before. 
 
 "But I shall often be home to see you, 
 Mary; every summer I shall spend the 
 month of August here, and the holydays in 
 winter will bring me back to your side. 
 Come now, dry up your tears and let us be 
 cheerful when we part. 'Tis but for a little 
 and then we meet again." 
 
 "I do not like to say it, Henry, but I do 
 feel afraid about your going to the city ; you 
 are so fond of company, and so full of life 
 and spirit, that I can not help but fear that 
 you will forget us up in the country, when 
 new friends and new scenes are before you." 
 
 Henry was startled at the thought. It 
 was new to him. He had never dreamed 
 that the pleasures of which he had a little 
 taste a few months ago were to make him 
 forgetful of the friends he had loved in his 
 childhood, and whom he thought he should 
 
HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 39 
 
 love as long as he had life. He was loud 
 in his assurances that distance and separa- 
 tion would only make them more dear, and 
 sure he was, that never would he find one 
 more precious than his own Mary. He was 
 only sorry that she was not going with him, 
 to he ever near him, that he could see her 
 every evening as he had done as long as he 
 could rernemher. 
 
 "And you will write to me often," she 
 said, " and tell me how you enjoy the city, 
 and what new friends you make, and how 
 you get on in business, and everything that 
 I would like to know : you will ?" 
 
 " Yes, certainly, and you will never let 
 a week go by, without writing to your own 
 Henry, who will think it the brightest day 
 of the week when he hears from Mary 
 Walton." 
 
 They parted. She stayed to pray for 
 him she loved, and Henry was soon in New 
 York, a clerk in one of the most fashion- 
 able drygoods stores of the city. * * * 
 
 " I say, Newton, what do you say to go- 
 
40 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 ing to the theatre to-night ?" said one of the 
 clerks to Henry, but a few days after he was 1 
 installed in his new situation. Henry had 
 never been to the theatre in his life, but he 
 had wanted to go a thousand times, and he 
 meant to go once, just to see for himself, 
 and know about it. 
 
 " I'm ready," he answered ; " I was 
 thinking of that same thing myself, and 
 should like it well." 
 
 A new world, and a dazzling one, burst 
 on the sight of that young man as the slight 
 door flew open at the touch of his compan- 
 ion, and the glare of the brilliant theatre 
 shone upon his bewildered eyes. There, 
 young men, you are in the outer circle of 
 the vortex, but booked and ticketed for the 
 fatal returnless plunge. You will play 
 around awhile upon the surface, and think 
 it fine fun to sport on the smooth wave, but 
 the devil is pushing your shell of a boat, 
 and grins behind you, as he sees the circle 
 narrowing, the rush increasing, your dam- 
 nation more sure. O ! if I could shout so 
 
HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 
 
 41 
 
 loud as to be heard above the roar of the 
 waters around you, I would cry, " Beware, 
 beware, for the path to hell lies there, and 
 the way is easy." 
 
 But what young man will stop to hear 
 preaching when he is crossing the thresh- 
 old of a theatre? Henry heard nothing, 
 saw nothing at first, but like one intoxicated 
 with the splendour of the scenery, the unreal 
 novelty of what was passing before him, he 
 gazed in silent amazement. His young 
 friend pointed him to well-known actors, 
 and initiated him slowly into the mysteries 
 of the new life on which he had entered. 
 A stroll through the galleries completed his 
 apprenticeship. Henry was an apt scholar. 
 Ardent, impetuous in his passions, fond of 
 pleasure and now seeking it, he needed little 
 instruction to guide him in the race of ruin 
 which he had entered. Before he slept that 
 night he had drank till he had little con- 
 sciousness of what he was doing, and when 
 he woke the next morning, a dim and dis- 
 tressing recollection of what he had passed 
 
42 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 through stole over him. It was bright while 
 it lasted, but it is bitter to remember, now 
 it is gone. But the next night was as the 
 last and more abundant in eviL He had 
 taken but a single step the night before, and 
 new scenes of dissipation, mirth, and dam- 
 ning sin, were unveiled to his craving appe- 
 tite. Like the tiger that has a taste for 
 blood, he longed for more. There is no 
 need that we follow him. The noose of the 
 devil is around his neck, and a " willing cap- 
 tive," he follows his master. Poor boy ! 
 The sweet air of your native hills would 
 have been purer and healthier for your soul, 
 than the close, foul atmosphere of that den 
 where you revelled on the second night of 
 your career of shame. What would Mary 
 Wilton have said, how would Mary W T ihon 
 have felt, had she known the dangers of 
 that dreadful night? Did you think of her, 
 Henry, when the laugh and the song rang 
 merrily in those walls where you sold your 
 soul for the miserable pay of an hour of 
 sin ? Yes, Henry, you know you did. And 
 
HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 
 
 43 
 
 once you thought you would dash away the 
 maddening cup, and break from the charmed 
 circle, and rush into the street and fly to 
 her who loved you and would make you 
 blest ! It was a sudden thought, and it 
 perished on the instant. Had you cherished 
 it one moment, perhaps it would have saved 
 you. But it was dnnvned in the wine-cup, 
 and your doom was sealed. 
 
 Henry Newton was not sufficiently inured 
 to these scenes of dissipation to be able to 
 conceal from his employers, his father's 
 friends, the evidences of his delinquency. 
 They could read it in his looks, and they 
 were faithful to remonstrate with him on 
 what they knew to be his habits; but when 
 w as a young man willing to believe that he 
 was in danger ? He could take care of 
 himself; he knew what he was about; he 
 was a little out of health and that made 
 him look so ; he would give them no reason 
 to fear for him, and besides, he was not 
 twenty yet, and might sow wild oats for 
 wme time to come. All this was very far 
 
44 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 from being satisfactory to them, and they 
 determined to consult with the father. 
 
 Mr. Newton heard the report of his son's 
 wildness with deep distress. It had not en- 
 tered into his calculations when sending 
 Henry, a young man of nineteen, into the 
 city, that he was to be led into bad compa- 
 ny and dissolute habits. But he was a man 
 of business, of close calculations, and as he 
 had sent Henry to the city solely because 
 he could make money there, so he reasoned 
 now, that if Henry had not the means to 
 gratify his desires for pleasure, he must deny 
 himself, and of necessity be a steady young 
 man. His salary was barely enough to 
 clothe him and pay for his board. Mr. 
 Newton would furnish him no more spend- 
 ing-money, and how could Henry then be 
 a spendthrift? 
 
 A severe, and certainly a deservedly se- 
 vere, letter from his father announced to 
 Henry, that his father had heard with deep 
 concern and grief the evil courses on which 
 he had entered, and he earnestly desired 
 
HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 45 
 
 him to forsake his evil companions ; and 
 if he would please his father, and make an 
 anxious family happy, he would leave the 
 city and hasten home. Not he. He smiled 
 at the suggestion, and was distressed with 
 one passage only in the letter — that which 
 informed him of his father's determination 
 to stop the supplies. 
 
 For a time, however, it did throw a check 
 upon his career. Indeed, there was no help 
 for it. Who would pay the bills? He had 
 always been the best supplied with money 
 of any in the club to which he belonged, 
 and it was more than he could stand to 
 think of making an exposure of his impov- 
 erished treasury. He chafed under his con- 
 finement, as he felt himself suddenly shut 
 out from sources of enjoyment which had 
 now become essential to his being, and he 
 began to devise ways and means to regain 
 what he had lost. An appeal to his father 
 for funds was worse than fruitless. It 
 brought him another and severer letter on 
 the error of his ways- 
 
46 
 
 LIFE IN THE CIT7. 
 
 A hundred times in the day he went to 
 the drawer in the store where the loose 
 change was thrown, and a hundred times a 
 day the thought was revolved, that if that 
 money was in his pocket, he could have all 
 he wanted. There comes the devil again : 
 he is drawing that noose a little tighter, and 
 a little tighter — he will strangle you yet, 
 young man. Touch that silver, and you 
 are lost. It is not yours. It shines but to 
 tempt ; resist the devil and he will flee, but 
 yield one inch and the game is up. 
 
 But he did touch it. He took k, a little 
 at a time, and it was not missed — a little 
 more, and then he wanted more, and the 
 desire grew with the indulgence, and indul- 
 gence was increased, till the inroad upon 
 the silver could no longer be concealed. 
 What would Mary Wilton say of you, Hen- 
 ry Newton, if she knew you were a thief! 
 Think of it, and hide your head with shame ; 
 blush at the very recollection of her purity, 
 her prayers, her tears, and your own base 
 apostacy, profligacy, and sinl 
 
HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 47 
 
 Henry's employers were not long in 
 doubt when they found there was a thief in 
 the store. But they would make an exam- 
 ple of him, and bring the thing home to his 
 own conscience in a form of peculiar terror; 
 so they determined to expel him from their 
 service, and send him home in disgrace. 
 Respect for a father's feelings prevented 
 them from delivering him up to the arm of 
 the law, while they doubted if justice did 
 not demand his punishment. Yet what a 
 change was this for Henry Newton, when 
 he returned to his father's house ! How 
 could he meet the eye of a father whose 
 confidence he had abused ! Would Mary 
 Wilton welcome him back to the spot which 
 he had deserted ? Should he ever regain 
 the character he had lost ? These were the 
 thoughts which pressed heavily upon him 
 when he made his way back to his native 
 village. He resolved to confess his errors, 
 to humble himself, and make an effort to 
 secure the sympathy and forgiveness of 
 those whom he had grieved. His father 
 
48 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 was but too willing to accept his professions 
 of penitence, and no one else had heard of 
 his fall. His own sister knew nothing of 
 it. and Mary Wilton, all unconscious of his 
 guilt, gave him a glad welcome. 
 
 " Now, you will never go back to that 
 dreadful city, will you? You will stay with 
 us, and be as happy as when we were chil- 
 dren, and never knew what it was to be 
 separated." 
 
 Henry was ready to promise. He was 
 for the moment heart-sick, and inwardly he 
 lamented the day when he was first tempted 
 to leave those lovely shades and early friends 
 for the gay, empty pleasures in which he 
 had been revelling. 
 
 So he felt for a few weeks, and then he 
 was discontented. He thought home was 
 dull, the pleasures of the country insipid, 
 and he sighed for the gayer and brighter 
 scenes which he had once delighted in. 
 
 It was a struggle for Mr. Newton to bring 
 himself to consent to Henry's proposal that 
 he should return to New York. Nor would 
 
HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 49 
 
 he have consented for a moment, but for his 
 son's repeated and solemn assurances that 
 he would devote himself strictly to business, 
 and never give any occasion for anxiety on 
 his account. He also proposed that his 
 younger sister should accompany him to 
 the city, and attend school during the win- 
 ter. Thus would he enjoy her society in 
 the evenings, after his duties for the day 
 were over, and she would be as a guardian 
 angel to watch him and restrain him from 
 evil. There was in this proposal so much 
 evidence of sincerity and determination to 
 lead a life of pure and manly virtue, that 
 Mr. Xewton once more sacrificed his own 
 views of duty, and his own wishes, to the 
 earnest solicitations of his son, and Henry 
 and his sister were soon in the city, a new 
 situation having been found for the young 
 man, where, after a short period of service, 
 he would succeed to a partnership in the 
 concern. 
 
 I have already related what has transpired 
 between the time of his return to New York 
 
50 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 and the night when I was going through 
 
 M street, on my w r ay home. He had 
 
 taken to play ; its fatal fascination had be- 
 guiled him ; all his pledges, extorted by 
 parental love, and given with filial reve- 
 rence, had been disregarded : even Mary 
 Wilton's love had been forgotten, and a sis* 
 ter's prayers by night and day, her tbreat- 
 enings to reveal to others his dangers, and 
 to beg her father to take him home, were 
 lost upon him. Madness was in his heart! 
 Deeper and still deeper he plunged into the 
 meshes of vice, till even his sister's hope 
 was all but spent. In one of his often visits 
 to the gaming tables, he has forgotten the 
 pledge which he had given to return early, 
 and his devoted sister, braving the exposure 
 of a solitary walk through the streets of the 
 city, and regardless of. the cold and storm 
 that were enough to prevent any one but 
 the bold from venturing out, she has re- 
 solved to make one desperate effort to 
 deliver her brother from the snares in 
 which he was caught, and save him, if 
 
HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 51 
 
 possible, from the ruin that seemed to be 
 at hand. 
 
 We had reached the house. I found the 
 number, and rang the bell. We waited in 
 painful silence for some moments before the 
 bell was answered ; but at length it was 
 cautiously opened by a servant, and, on our 
 attempting to enter, we were told that this 
 was a private house, and the family had re- 
 tired. Here was an unexpected difficulty. 
 Yet I had already discovered in the manner 
 of the servant something that gave the lie to 
 his assertion, and telling him that we knew 
 where we were, I ordered him to show us 
 the way. 
 
 We stepped into the hall, and he con- 
 ducted us down stairs, and through a long 
 passage into a large room, which, as we en- 
 tered it, almost stifled us with its foul, 
 steaming, suffocating atmosphere. The 
 quick eye of the young lady speedily sin- 
 gled out the object of her search, among 
 the many tables around which were seated 
 parties of midnight gamblers deep in play. 
 
52 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 Not one of them noticed us as we entered, 
 The steady fixedness of every eye upon the 
 game was terrible. It was but a moment 
 before she rushed behind him, and, twining 
 her arms around his neck, whispered in his 
 ear, " Henry, have you forgotten your own 
 sister?" He started from his seat, and was 
 about to break out in a rage at the boldness 
 of the girl to venture into such a place ; 
 and shame must have seized his heart, too, 
 at the thought that he was detected thus in 
 the midst of his guilt. Before he could 
 speak, she laid her hand on his arm, and 
 checking his anger, promised to explain it 
 all to him on the way home, if he would 
 only leave his play and go with her. " You 
 must go," she said ; " I shall never leave 
 you an instant until you are yourself again." 
 He found remonstrance was useless, and 
 making a hasty apology to his companions, 
 whose bitter sneers fell on his ear as he 
 turned away, he gave his arm to his sister, 
 and they left the house together. 
 
 In the street she thanked me for my at- 
 
HENRY NEWTON AND HIS SISTER. 
 
 53 
 
 tention, and, on my informing her of my 
 profession, and of my interest in the errand 
 which had brought us for a few moments in 
 company, she asked me to call. And I did 
 call, with a strong desire to know more of 
 the fate of Henry Newton. 
 
 Jt is less than a year since T first met 
 him. It is less than two years since he first 
 came to this city. But what ravages have 
 those years made in his character, and in 
 the hearts of those that loved him ! For a 
 brief season after the brave attempt of his 
 sister to rescue him from the destroyer, he 
 abandoned his haunts, and inspired her 
 heart again with hope. The gleam of sun- 
 shine was transient. The passion for play 
 was the mightiest emotion of his soul, and 
 no earthly tie was strong enough to hold 
 him back. It is needless for me to speak 
 of the efforts his sister made to restrain and 
 reclaim him, nor of the wild rejection he 
 gave to every entreaty which she pressed 
 upon him. His father's authority was in- 
 voked in vain ; his Mary's love was brought 
 5* 
 
54 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 to bear upon his heart, but he despised it. 
 He was joined to his idols, and wanted to 
 be let alone. The sister, worn with his sin- 
 ful career, and powerless to hold him back, 
 returned home. The father has since sought 
 him out, and attempted to save him , but 
 he is on the high-road to ruin, if not aireddy 
 in the pit. 
 
BIMON WILSON, THE DROVER BOY. 55 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SIMON "WILSON, THE DROVER BOY. 
 
 Those who learn life in the city from 
 these sketches, must form a sad opinion of 
 it. I have told only tales of sorrow, the 
 "shadows" of life; while the picture has 
 had no "lights" to gladden it. Well, there 
 is a bright side to it, and I could in the cir- 
 cle of my acquaintance find stories to tell 
 you that are full of what the world calls 
 " good ;" and the recital of which will waken 
 pleasant feelings in the breast. 
 
 There is Simon Wilson — nobody will 
 know him by that name, and as my sketch 
 is from the life, I choose to hide his other 
 under this — when I was a boy, up in the 
 country, Simon was a boy too — a cow-boy ; 
 on the farm which his master worked, Si- 
 mon was kept as the boy of all work, run- 
 
56 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 ning of errands, bringing in wood, "putting 
 out" the horses, and all those little odds and 
 ends of things that the regular hands could 
 not see to, were left for him. Of course, 
 he was ordered about by every one, from 
 the milk-maid, who made him wait on her 
 whenever she caught him idle, up to the 
 rough farmer, who kicked him whenever he 
 found him standing still. Simon had a hard 
 time of it on that farm, and often, when go- 
 ing to bed in a cold garret, where the snow 
 blew thick and fast through the cracks upon 
 his scant bed-clothes, he wished that he 
 might get away from that farm and do some- 
 thing for himself. And when the harsh 
 voice of the old farmer startled him from 
 his slumbers in the gray of the morning, and 
 Simon heard him crying at the foot of the 
 stairs, "Hullo! there, you lazy rascal, if 
 you don't make haste and come down, I'll 
 help you," the shivering lad wished, from 
 the bottom of his heart, that he could find 
 some way of escape from the miserable fate 
 to which he was doomed. 
 
SIMON WILSON, THE DROVER BOY. 
 
 57 
 
 The farmer was in the habit of driving 
 cattle to market, and on one occasion being 
 short of a hand to help, he told Simon to 
 brush up and come along. It was a short 
 operation for him to brush up — his best was 
 a poor affair — but he was in ecstasy at the 
 thought of getting off from the farm into the 
 world, and he was very soon rigged for the 
 journey. And a rougher looking drover 
 never stopped at Bull's Head than Simon 
 Wilson, when, for the first time, he made 
 his entry into the city of New York, in the 
 rear of some three hundred cattle, which the 
 farmer was bringing to market. A wag at 
 the tavern was struck with the uncouth ap- 
 pearance of the youth, and determined to 
 have a joke at his expense. 
 
 "I say, my boy," said the wag, "what 
 would you be willing to work for by the 
 day?" 
 
 Simon thought he had found something 
 to do, and that the great object of his hopes 
 and thoughts while driving his cattle from 
 Dutchess county was about to be realized. 
 
58 
 
 LIFE IN THE ylTT. 
 
 M Waal," said he, " I ain't partikeler, most 
 anything you are a mind to give. I don't 
 like farming, and I thought as how I'd come 
 down to York and see what there was a go- 
 ing on. I guess you and 1 '11 agree about 
 the wages." 
 
 "Very well," said the w r ag, " I'll tell you 
 what I want you to do. You may go out 
 into the yard and stand there for the cattle 
 to rub against. You are just about rough 
 enough for that." 
 
 Now that is not a very refined joke, I ad- 
 mit, and rather too coarse for these pages, 
 but it is a fact and saves me time in giving 
 the reader an idea of the outer man of our 
 Simon when he first came into these parts. 
 The boys laughed at him as he sauntered 
 about the streets, but philosopher as he was, 
 he paid no attention to them. His head 
 was at work. Here was the place for busi- 
 ness. He saw it at a glance, and scratching 
 his carroty head, he thought of ways and 
 means to get into the great market-house 
 and run his chance with the rest. Simon 
 
SIMON WtLSON, THE DROVER BOY. 59 
 
 returned to the farm with his master, in the 
 course of a few days, resolved to be a man. 
 He would show himself trustworthy, and 
 then he would be trusted. By-and-by some- 
 thing would turn up, and he would seize 
 upon it to improve his situation, but while 
 he was here, he would do the best he could 
 for his employer. This was in the spirit 
 of the scripture, that speaks of him who is 
 faithful in a little being faithful also in much. 
 His master saw the change that had come 
 over the boy, and was pleased to encourage 
 him. He intrusted him with more and more 
 of his business ; sending him to the village 
 to make small purchases when they were 
 necessary, and some months afterward, he 
 actually despatched Simon to the city with 
 a small drove of cattle. Had the boy been 
 suddenly made president of the United 
 States, he could scarcely have been more 
 sensible of the responsibility resting upon 
 him. And he performed his duty faithfully, 
 and returned home to give an account of his 
 stewardship. The farmer was highly grati- 
 
60 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 fied with the promptness and business-tact 
 of the young man, and gradually committed 
 more and more of his business to his hands, 
 until, when Simon came of age, and he was 
 now able to choose for himself where he 
 would go, the farmer was willing to give him 
 any wages he might name, if Simon would 
 only consent to remain and superintend his 
 affairs. But the young man thought of the 
 city, and after a few months' labor on the 
 farm to earn something with which to start 
 in business, he came down to New York, 
 on foot, with a bundles of clothes tied up in 
 a cotton pocket-handkerchief, slung over his 
 shoulder on a stick. He was rather unsuc- 
 cessful at first in finding employment ; his 
 rustic appearance being against him, and he 
 was finally under the necessity of engaging 
 as a hand on a North river sloop. He was 
 soon the master of a sloop. It was not a 
 very long time before he was the owner of 
 a sloop. It was a short step from a sloop 
 to a steamboat, and Simon Wilson invested 
 his earnings in that business. He was sue- 
 
SIMON WILSON, THE DROVER BOY. 61 
 
 cessful. Keeping his eyes wide open, at- 
 tending constantly to business, and fulfilling 
 his engagements so strictly that his word 
 was as good as his bond, he rose to distinc- 
 tion in his line. He went asnore to attend 
 to matters there, while his rapidly accumu- 
 lating property was employed on the water. 
 Simon Wilson became known on 'change. 
 He began to dabble in stocks. Prudent, 
 cool, even cunning at times, he bought and 
 sold at the very nick of time, and his wealth 
 rolled in like a flood. 
 
 Yesterday I was walking up Broadway, 
 and a splendid carriage, drawn by elegant 
 bays, drew up at Stewart's; a couple of 
 delicate girls stepped out as daintily, while 
 the liveried footman held the door, as if 
 their pretty feet had never been upon the 
 ground in the world, and as they tripped 
 by me, I perceived they were Simon's 
 daughters ! Yes, there they were. Simon 
 married shortly after he was fairly started 
 in business, and now keeps his carriage ; 
 lives in great style in the upper part of the 
 6 
 
LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 city ; rides down pretty much every day ; 
 and in very pleasant weather you may see 
 these two girls, fifteen and seventeen, or 
 thereabouts, lolling in the luxurious carriage, 
 as much at ease as if they had been born 
 with a silver spoon in their mouths. Happy 
 Simon ! my young readers will say. And 
 the psalmist said, " Men will praise thee when 
 thou doest well by thyself." 
 
 And yet I have a private notion that you 
 are mistaken, my innocent reader. Simon 
 was not happy, I admit it, when he did 
 " chores" for the farmer in Dutchess; but 
 he might have been and ought to have been ; 
 and had he kept on at the old business, and 
 settled in that neighbourhood, and lived and 
 laboured in the free, rough country of his 
 birth and childhood, he would have been a 
 happier man than he ever has been since. 
 He has never slept so soundly here in his 
 handsome mansion as he did in the farmer's 
 garret : he wakes oftener in the night than 
 he did then, and rolls over, thinking of his 
 stocks and steamboats ; and many a time 
 
SIMON WILSON, THE DROVER BOY. 63 
 
 he has sighed after the rustic pleasures of 
 that farmer life, sweeter to the heart and 
 longer to be loved and remembered, than 
 those more brilliant and costly which gold 
 has got him in this proud city. And then 
 Simon, and Simon's wife, and Simon's 
 daughters, find that his wealth will not bring 
 them into that society, wealthy men, and 
 wealthy men's wives and daughters, wish for, 
 and can not be happy without. In this 
 democratic country of ours, as soon as a 
 man gets money enough to keep a carriage 
 and live without work, he claims to belong 
 to the upper classes, and it is no small drop 
 of gall in his cup if this very natural claim 
 is called in question. But it takes more 
 than money to make a gentleman, and there- 
 fore not a few of our " fellow-citizens" have 
 to put up with the inconveniences of that 
 position which worth, education, and man- 
 ners, or want of all, have made them fit for, 
 while they look up with envy and ill-con- 
 cealed mortification at the loftier heights to 
 which they would gladly, but can not attain. 
 
04 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 The full equality that reigns in the country, 
 is one of the greatest comforts of society 
 there. Nobody looks up to anybody. An 
 evening party is made up of (he neighbours, 
 and none are excluded because they are not 
 good enough society ! " Where ignorance 
 is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise," and surely, 
 knowing nothing of the artificial distinctions 
 of life, the plain people in Simon Wilson's 
 sphere, when Simon was a boy, were hap- 
 pier far than Simon or his neighbours in the 
 upper end of Broadway. If this opinion 
 is called in question by any of the readers 
 of these sketches, I shall not argue the mat- 
 ter with them. I speak from observation, 
 and if there are not more heart-aches and 
 head-aches here in this proud city than in 
 the green valleys of the river counties, then 
 have I lived in both to little purpose. Its ev- 
 idence is on every face you meet, and you 
 meet so many faces daily, that the very sight 
 of them is bewildering, and it is a relief to turn 
 from studying physiognomy, as you walk, 
 to mineralogy among the paving-stonea. 
 
THE BARBER BROKER. 
 
 65 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE BARBER BROKER. 
 
 There, I just passed a "gentleman of 
 colour ;" he walked with the air of a man; 
 and his very step seemed to say that he was 
 somebody. Would you like to hear a word 
 of his history, to know what there is in that 
 man to mark him from his fellows, and 
 make him worth a place in these chronicles 
 of Gotham ? A few years ago he was a 
 barber in Nassau street ; a steady, industri- 
 ous man, and having made a little money, 
 he invested it successfully, and his little 
 grew to more, till he shut up his barber- 
 shop and went into trade. He went to the 
 West Indies as supercargo of a vessel, the 
 most of the freight being his own, and here 
 be was quite as successful in his operations 
 as he was at home. His property was 
 6* 
 
66 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 speedily doubled, and he spread his sails 
 for still wider business, till he became a 
 well-known trader. He left the seas and 
 set up in Wall street, and now deals in 
 stocks, and in his line now commands the 
 respect and confidence of his fellow-men. 
 [ do not know that he is in business now, 
 but I meet him occasionally, as I did yes- 
 terday, in Rroadway, and it is with feelings 
 of pleasure that I observe one of this race, 
 who has succeeded by honest industry and 
 perseverance in so far subduing the preju- 
 dices of the community, that he has been 
 enabled to rise above the condition of his 
 class and make something of himself. I 
 have always felt a deep interest in these 
 coloured people. It seems hard that they 
 should be shut out of the avenues to wealth, 
 and honour, and usefulness, and their souls 
 must be ground down by the oppression of 
 caste, as if the bonds were on their necks. 
 I was in a barber's-shop a few months ago, 
 and I said to the man who was shaving me, 
 *' Do you send your children to school?" 
 
THE BARBER BROKER. 
 
 67 
 
 * Oh, no," said he ; " why should I send 
 them to school ? They will pick up enough 
 learning for my business, and they can never 
 be anything more than barbers." 
 
 I felt sorry for him, and to give him some 
 consolation I added, " But education will 
 make them happier even if they never fol- 
 low any other employment." 
 
 The barber sighed, and remarked with 
 evident pain : " You have touched the sore 
 spot exactly. If I do not give them edu- 
 cation, they will be contented as barbers, 
 and in a measure as happy as men in their 
 line ; but if they had learning they would 
 never be satisfied here, and would therefore 
 be more miserable than if left in their ig- 
 norance." 
 
 There was reason and truth in these mel- 
 ancholy remarks, and I saw the poor fellow 
 felt what he said. Again I might recite 
 the line, 
 
 "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." 
 Knowledge may make a man discontented, 
 
68 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 and unless it may be made available to in- 
 crease his present, or prospective useful- 
 ness or happiness, you can hardly expect 
 that he will make any great effort to secure 
 it for himself or his children. 
 
 A strange world this is we live in, and its 
 ups and downs are so sudden and singular, 
 that he is a fool who makes calculations 
 upon anything here as if it were sure to 
 stand. I know of nothing in this world 
 that men make (but the pyramids) that is 
 worth calling substantial, and the pyramids 
 will not stand for ever. Fortunes are made 
 suddenly here, it is true, and often lost as 
 suddenly. The British steamer arrived a 
 day or two ago with news that the crops had 
 failed in England, and the price of flour 
 went up in an instant ; a few men making 
 thousands of dollars by the operations of a 
 single day. A speck of a war-cloud in the 
 horizon will sink the price of stocks, and 
 strip away the gilded hopes of the specula- 
 tor. These are the changes of the hour. 
 But there are many who take a slower and 
 
ISABELLA. 
 
 69 
 
 a surer road to wealth and pleasure, and 
 they sometimes find what they seek, and 
 having amassed a " handsome property," 
 retire to enjoy it in the shades of rural life. 
 Others again make their way to wealth by 
 the heart, a queer path to be sure, and who 
 knows what it means. There is a lady who 
 went to the district school with me in the 
 country, twenty years ago. She was the 
 daughter of poor, but very respectable pa- 
 rents, and they had connexions living in New 
 York, and when Isabella was old enough to 
 go from home visiting, she came to the city 
 to make a visit. Her fresh, full-blown 
 beauty, like one of our mountain roses, 
 drew many an eye after her as she made 
 her first appearance in society ; and not 
 many months elapsed before she had the 
 offer of the hand of one of the most prom- 
 ising young merchants in Pearl street. She 
 married him ; he had no care for money 
 with a wife, as he was making enough with- 
 out, and so they married for pure love. 
 Why should they not? And now my old 
 
70 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 school-mate Isabel, her husband having 
 been in successful business twenty years, is 
 at the head of a fine establishment, with 
 servants and horses at her command, her 
 princely mansion up-town is furnished in 
 splendid style, and as she presses her ele- 
 gant carpets, and patches a glimpse of her- 
 self in a thousand-dollar pier-glass on the 
 wall, she can scarcely believe that it is the 
 same Isabel that used to climb the rail- 
 fences with me when we went to pick black- 
 berries. And it is not the same Isabel ; a 
 change, and to me a sad one, has come 
 over the playmate of my youth ; she does 
 not know the friends of her childhood, or 
 at least my plain black dress is an effectual 
 disguise when I meet her in Broadway; 
 and if she has forgotten me, her memory 
 must have suffered. 
 
THE SPANISH GENERAL'S WIDOW. 71 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE SPANISH GENERAL 's WIDOW. 
 
 I met with an incident recently, that so 
 completely illustrates the uncertainty of this 
 world, and the vanity of trusting in wealth 
 for permanent enjoyment, that I will tell it 
 here, instead of moralizing on the general 
 subject ; for I have found that the most of 
 readers prefer to have the story, and then 
 they will make reflections to suit them- 
 selves ; but if they are treated to the reflec- 
 tions before the story, they are apt to do 
 without both. 
 
 In the year 1S00 — that is, just forty-six 
 years ago, as a very little arithmetic sufficeth 
 to make apparent — Julia Bell was at work 
 in a small fancy-shop in New York city. 
 This is a very matter-of-fact way of intro- 
 
72 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 ducing the story, but the rest is in keeping 
 with it. She was from the country, and had 
 come here, not to visit, but to work. The 
 child of poor parents in New Jersey, she 
 had been left an orphan at an early age, and 
 thrown upon the charity of a heartless world. 
 So we call the world ; and yet it is not 
 hcartlessness that builds a home for the or- 
 phan, and makes comfortable provision for 
 the poor. There was not such systematic 
 provision made at the time that Julia had 
 need of it ; but when she was deprived of 
 her natural protectors, there were those who 
 took an interest in her; and when she was 
 old enough to do something for herself, they 
 tried to find her a place. She had too deli- 
 cate a frame for housework, and there was 
 a neatness of manner, and readiness to do 
 whatever she put her hand to, that led those 
 who had the charge of her to think of put- 
 ting her at a trade. 'This was what it was 
 called in the country, and yet it sounds 
 somewhat coarse when applied to the labor 
 of tender hands. It was this that led her 
 
THE SPANISH GENERAL'S WIDOW. 73 
 
 guardians to look after a situation for her in 
 New York, and here she was brought and 
 bound till she was eighteen. Julia was in 
 her sixteenth year when she sat down at her 
 work in the shop, in the midst of a dozen 
 girls who had been familiar with the city, 
 the most of them, all their lives. I have 
 not said that Julia was a beauty — she did 
 not know it herself; but the instant she en- 
 tered the scene of her labors, every one 
 who saw her knew it, and marked her ac- 
 cordingly. It is one of the worst features 
 that I ever saw in the characters of young 
 women, that they are envious of one anoth- 
 er's good looks ! I have noticed it in 
 schools, in families, and wherever young 
 ladies gather, that whereas wit, talent, ac- 
 complishment, will extort admiration and 
 praise from the companions of her who pos- 
 sesses one or all of them, beauty begets 
 envy. Not always, for sometimes good na- 
 ture will disarm and expel it ; but it is a 
 very common thing, and was certainly a 
 fact when Julia Bell, in the bloom of youth- 
 7 
 
74 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 ful loveliness, radiant with health, and yet 
 slightly paled with anxiety and fear, was 
 brought into the shop among these girls, 
 and took her seat at work. A slight titter 
 passed around, and significant winks and 
 tosses of the head were interchanged, as the 
 thought struck each of them, that the hand- 
 somest girl in the room was the one that 
 had just come. 
 
 Julia Bell, the orphan girl, the child of 
 the public, a poorhouse girl, is now at ser- 
 vice. Days of weariness were before her ; 
 and her support, the food that she must 
 Lave, and her clothing, was to be her only 
 ,pay for years of toil. But Julia had a 
 cheerful heart, and it shone in her sweet 
 face, like the smile of a spring morning, and 
 she went to her work to make herself use- 
 ful, as if a fortune were in prospect as the 
 reward of her industry. Such a girl could 
 scarcely fail to make friends of all who knew 
 her. Overflowing good nature melted and 
 won the hearts of her shopmates, while her 
 skill and faithfulness soon showed her em- 
 
THE SPANISH GENERAL^ WIDOW. 75 
 
 ployers that she was one of a thousand. 
 Julia had not been more than eighteen 
 months in the city, when the mistress of 
 the establishment promoted her to the more 
 responsible and attractive duty of selling 
 the goods in the front store. This was an 
 era in her life. She had been in the little 
 back room at work, and up stairs to sleep, 
 day after day, with scarcely an hour in one 
 of them, but Sunday, for air and exercise ; 
 and she had, time and again, sighed for 
 something to do, that would bring her into 
 contact, if not communion, with the world. 
 There is a gift of gracefulness as well as 
 beauty, that nature sometimes bestows, and 
 of a truth, our Julia Bell seemed to have 
 been a favorite with nature in the distribu- 
 tion of these gifts. She had the air of one 
 born to please. This seemed not to be 
 — how could it be — the result of imitation, 
 for what had she seen of the world ? • It was 
 natural to her, and all the more winning and 
 striking because it was no effort. Her 
 words, her smile, her motions, were nature 
 
76 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 in her sweetest forms, and many were the 
 observations made by persons of birth and 
 fortune, upon the face and manners of the 
 handsome shop-girl. Yet all unconscious 
 was Julia, all this time, that others were 
 better pleased with her than with her com- 
 panions. It was all the comfort the poor 
 girl had, to try and make herself agreeable, 
 and surely she was to be commended for 
 seeking it in such an innocent way. And 
 as Julia's appearance was now a source of 
 profit to the establishment, for not a few 
 were drawn to the store by the remarks of 
 those who had been there and seen her, 
 Julia found her means increased to make 
 more of a show, for the lady-proprietor 
 found her account in setting off the charms 
 of her head-clerk to the best advantage. 
 
 Among a party of ladies and gentlemen 
 that one day dropped in at the store, for 
 there were not so many fancy stores in 
 Broadway forty-five years ago as there are 
 now, and crowds in the most fashionable of 
 the few were not uncommon, was a Spanish 
 
THE SPANISH GENERAL'S WIDOW. 77 
 
 officer, whose fancy was more taken with 
 Julia's beauty than with anything that he saw 
 for sale. He spoke of her as they left the 
 store and his gay friends laughed at him, and 
 rallied him for being suddenly smitten with 
 a shop-girl. The spirited officer took offence 
 at their raillery, and promised himself that 
 he would go and see her again, more because 
 he had been laughed at about her, than for 
 any reason that he could assign. It was 
 easy to find an excuse, and the next day he 
 wanted something in the fancy line, and the 
 next day he had occasion to go for some- 
 thing else, and he soon became a regular 
 customer, whose calls were expected. He 
 was fairly taken, and the proud spirit of a 
 Spaniard yielded to the charms of a poor 
 but beautiful maiden, whose simple grace- 
 fulness of manners pleased him more than 
 all the dark-eyed beauties he had ever seen 
 in the Peninsula. He was a youth of for- 
 tune, and was now across the ocean to see 
 the world : the thought was very easy to 
 him that he could carry off this girl as a 
 7* 
 
78 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 prize, and that in bis own country no one 
 would know her origin, while her beauty 
 would be her passport, and his sword would 
 secure for her the position she deserved, if 
 it should ever be questioned for an instant. 
 I have no gift for telling love-stories, and 
 therefore I pass over in silence, leaving the 
 ready reader to imagine, the ways and the 
 means by which the Spaniard managed to 
 make himself acquainted with Julia Bell ; 
 nor shall I pause to tell you how r she was 
 naturally disposed to listen to the tale that 
 he breathed into her fascinated ear. She 
 was now nearly eighteen, a few weeks more 
 and she could decide for herself, as to her 
 heart or her hand. The weeks were soon 
 by, Julia was herself again, and it is not to 
 be wondered at, that she preferred the daz- 
 zling prospects which were held out to her 
 by the young Spaniard, to the less romantic 
 and dull realities of imprisonment for life 
 with hard labor in the city. She married 
 him, and went to Spain with him, and there 
 shone as a star of the first magnitude among 
 
THE SPANISH GENERAL 's WIDOW. 79 
 
 the grandees of the land. There was not 
 a pleasure that wealth could buy which was 
 not hers; not a luxury to be longed for but 
 was flung into her lap with a free hand, by 
 her indulgent lord of a husband. It was 
 indeed a new world to the orphan-girl of 
 Jersey. The vision of fairy-land could not 
 be more unreal to her eyes, than the mag- 
 nificence in which she revelled, and if the 
 unbounded love of her husband, who was 
 as proud of her as if she had been a prin- 
 cess, and her fortune a mine of gold, could 
 have made her happy, she would have been 
 in paradise. 
 
 Spain is, and was a theatre of revolutions. 
 Julia had cast her lot with one who was on 
 the top of the wave, now borne on to power 
 and fortune by the tide of events, but the 
 next wave might sweep him to utter ruin. 
 So it was. The fickle multitude, tired of 
 the idol of the day, had dethroned him, and 
 with the party were stranded the hopes and 
 fortunes of our young officer. Nor was 
 this the worst of it for Julia. She had his 
 
80 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 heart and could she have had him, they 
 might have borne the reverses together, and 
 fought on in hope of better times. But he 
 fell on the battle-field, and she suddenly 
 found herself the widow of an officer who 
 was on the defeated side, and therefore a 
 rebel and conspirator : his estates were seized 
 upon, and she was compelled to fly with what 
 little personal property, money, jewels, her 
 wardrobe, &c, she could in a moment lay 
 her hands on, and making the best of her 
 way to this country, she arrived in New York 
 after an absence of nearly twenty years, al- 
 most as destitute as when she first came to 
 the city from New Jersey. But she had 
 resources within herself, a will to do, and 
 with heroic courage she resolved to go to 
 icork : trusting in Providence, and helping 
 herself as well as she could. For years she 
 managed to earn a decent support, and ma- 
 king a few friends whose kindness she often 
 experienced when her strength w r as inade- 
 quate for the burdens she had assumed, she 
 rubbed along. By-and-by the infirmities of 
 
THE SPANISH GENERAL 's WIDOW. 81 
 
 age overtook her ; the friends whom she 
 had found, died, removed, or forgot her, and 
 old folks are not apt to make new friends : 
 her scanty means became still more scanty, 
 and at last she was reduced to actual want. 
 What was to be her fate? Must she starve 
 in the midst of plenty ? Shall a city like 
 this allow an old lady to die for want of food ? 
 V T ery likely she would have perished thus 
 but for the heavenly charity of a band of 
 females, who had formed an association to 
 seek for objects on whom to expend their 
 alms. These pious ladies, in their walks 
 of mercy, found her, confined to her bed, 
 such as it was, with sickness, hunger, and 
 old age : they supplied her immediate wants, 
 and under the sunshine of their kindness she 
 revived. Health and some strength came 
 back, and she was able to be up again. But 
 they could not sustain her without aid from 
 the public charities, and were reluctantly 
 obliged to intrust her case " to the proper 
 authorities." 
 
82 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 It was in a "house for the poor" that I 
 found her. It is not more than six months 
 since I saw her there. A few of the facts 
 in her remarkable history were mentioned 
 to me by a visiter who had been familiar 
 with them, and said to her: — 
 
 " You have seen better days, madam?'* 
 
 " O, yes, sir," she replied, " I used to 
 ride in my coach and four," and her eyes 
 lighted up with ardour at the thought of 
 what she had been, for Julia Bell always 
 looked on the bright side of things. 
 
 " I hope you are enabled," said I, " to 
 say with one of old, The Lord gave and 
 the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name 
 of the Lord." But I had not touched the 
 right chord. The old woman had never 
 honoured God in her prosperity, and now 
 that the cold and cheerless winds of adver- 
 sity were howling around her, she found no 
 peace in believing in the widow's friend. I 
 urged her to seek the Lord, even in the last 
 days of her pilgrimage, and assured her that 
 in him she would find more satisfying and 
 
THE SPANISH GENERAL'S WIDOW. 83 
 I 
 
 enduring joy than the brightest earthly scenes 
 had ever shed upon her path. 
 
 But the heart was cold and hard. Sen- 
 sibility itself had died within her, and I 
 suppose she has by this time gone to try 
 one more change, and that the last. Such 
 is the story of the Spanish General's Wid 
 ow : nothing of incident in it, and no effort 
 at description to set it off ; but it is a pic- 
 ture of life as it is, and as such it comes 
 within my plan to tell it. 
 
 I said it is a strange world we live in. Its 
 changes are sudden sometimes, terrible of- 
 ten. " There is nothing true but heaven." 
 I know it, and I could not doubt it if I 
 should try. As I look along the signs of 
 the stores in any one street of business, and 
 recall the names that were there twenty 
 years ago, it seems as if a pestilence must 
 have swept the old inhabitants off, and a 
 new generation had arisen to take their 
 places. Men of business have often made 
 the same remark to me respecting the 
 changes that are taking place in their ranks. 
 
84 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 and I can see it going on from year to year. 
 There is sadness in the sight and in the 
 thought. 
 
 And yet, after all, what are riches and 
 poverty, what is the pleasure and honour 
 that wealth can purchase, what is the pain 
 that want of it will cause, compared with 
 the inheritance that awaits us just ahead? 
 Here we live but for another life, and that 
 life is endless. We lay up riches, and die 
 before we enjoy them. We live a few years 
 here without them, and die to become the 
 joint inheritors of realms of glory. It is 
 the character we bear that seals the title- 
 deeds to bliss or wo hereafter. What will 
 it matter fifty years hence to you, Mr. Si- 
 mon Wilson, that you were the richest man 
 on 'change to-day ? Suppose you make 
 your bed of bank-bills, and sleep under a 
 canopy of gold, and shine with diamonds, 
 will your wealth buy peace of conscience 
 in a dying hour, or a drop of water when 
 the last ray of hope has been shut from the 
 cavern of despair? You will forget your 
 
THE SPANISH GENERAL'S WIDOW. 85 
 
 sumptuous living, and splendid equipage, 
 and costly furniture, when the last fire burns 
 up the earth, and the elements melt with 
 fervent heat. These are things of to-day 
 only. Eternity is before you ! You are 
 to live for ever : to feel as tenderly the 
 power of pleasure or of pain, as when now 
 you hear of the sudden rise of your town- 
 lots, or feel a sharp knife piercing your 
 flesh. Exquisite joy or misery is to be 
 your portion, Simon Wilson, world without 
 end! And who is more insane than you, 
 if you make gold your god, and worship it 
 a few years only, and then, then, Simon, 
 leave it all, and spend eternity in tears 
 of bitter, vain regret. 
 
 My philosophy has a future life to spend 
 itself upon. I believe in a world to come. 
 And that world is to be a world without 
 change. As we enter upon it, we shall con- 
 tinue for ever and ever, only that we shall 
 go onward in the line of progress which we 
 commence. That is the world for me. This 
 is so short, so uncertain, so unsatisfying, 
 8 
 
86 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 that I mean to use it only as a means to an 
 end. It shall serve as a school in which we 
 shall be trained for the next ; when that 
 comes, and He who put us here in this 
 training process will say the glad words, 
 "Come up hither," I will be glad to leave 
 all below and enter on that which he hath 
 prepared for those that love him. I will 
 not fret at losses, or repine at poverty, or 
 murmur at swift reverses ; it will all be right 
 hereafter, and I shall rejoice in it then, if 
 not before. 
 
CITY CHARITY. 
 
 87 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CITY CHaRITY. 
 
 A few weeks since, in the city of Phila- 
 delphia, a young lady of family, fortune, and 
 beauty, was walking in the streets, and she 
 met a little girl trying in vain to get home 
 with two baskets of fuel which she had 
 picked up. They were too much for the 
 poor thing to carry. She had yielded to 
 despair, and was weeping bitterly, when the 
 young lady in silks came by, and seeing her 
 distress, and the cause of it, at once offered 
 to take the baskets and help her on with 
 her heavy load. The little girl was all un- 
 used to such kindness, and, with delicacy 
 quite unlooked for in such a garb, declined 
 to put the lady to so much trouble. " Then 
 I will stay here," said the lady, " and watch 
 
88 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 one basket, while you carry the other home." 
 To this arrangement the confiding child con- 
 sented, and there the elegant and fashiona- 
 ble heiress stood in her beauty, and kept 
 guard over the basket of chips, while the 
 little girl ran home and returned. 
 
 I tell this story as more truly character- 
 istic of a generous and benevolent heart, 
 more worthy of record and eulogy, than the 
 deeds of many philanthropists of the world, 
 whose fame is world-wide, whose praise is 
 trumpeted in the newspapers while they 
 live, and graven in marble when they die. 
 There is a large infusion of charity to be 
 seen of men in the benevolence of the age. 
 I know an elderly lady whose name is on 
 the published list of many of the societies 
 of the city for the relief of this, that, and the 
 other class of suffering humanity ; but the 
 "poor girls" who wait on her ladyship, and 
 the poor trades-people that come to her for 
 their honest dues, and the poor relations 
 that would be glad to have some of her su- 
 perfluous dresses and ornaments, never re- 
 
CITY CHARITY. 
 
 SO 
 
 member her in their thanksgivings. They 
 have no reason, then, to bear her in mind. 
 All the good she does is in the organic way. 
 She is a lady-patroness of several popular 
 associations ; but she would as soon think 
 of going on a mission to Kamtschatka, as to 
 enter a cellar to carry a cold dinner to a 
 starving family, or to stand in the street and 
 watch a basket while the ragged owner was 
 running: home with another. Yet she thinks 
 she is a notably benevolent woman, and the 
 world thinks so too ; and when she dies, 
 there will be an obituary eulogy of her in 
 the Observer half a column long. 
 
 Not a word of censure does all this im- 
 ply upon those who do good in this way. 
 This age of ours is distinguished for its sys- 
 tems of doing good, and, beyond all doubt, 
 the charity of the kind-hearted is thus car- 
 ried to many a habitation of wo that other- 
 wise would never be reached. The wisdom, 
 as well as the love, of the compassionate has 
 been employed to devise ways and means 
 to search and discover poverty and distress 
 8* 
 
90 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 in all its secret lurking-places, and to relieve 
 it there. It is a blessed thing to find a child 
 of sorrow in retirement, shrinking away from 
 the stare of the unfeeling world, and to pour 
 oil and wine into the wounds of that sore 
 heart, and thus make gladness to flourish 
 where just now was grief only, with no hope 
 for brighter days to come. 
 
 Perhaps it is a morbid sympathy, if such 
 a passion may become diseased, that leads 
 me to look into the condition of the various 
 classes of my fellow-men, to learn what they 
 want, or rather what they need, and to take 
 a common interest in every wise and prac- 
 ticable scheme for the benefit of the human 
 race. Tt is a wicked world we live in, and 
 wherever sin reigns misery lives ; and he 
 is a benefactor who pours one drop of com- 
 fort on an aching heart, or plants one motive 
 to do better in an erring mortal. 
 
 Just drop your business for a moment, 
 or wait till after dinner, if you dine as early 
 as four o'clock — it will be rather late to 
 stan a* five, but it will answer then — and 
 
CITY CHARITY. 
 
 let us take a walk into the city, and see how 
 the world lives. This is Chambers street. 
 You see its houses are substantial, and ev- 
 ery one of them, almost, is plainly such a 
 house as good families down town live in. 
 But from this street you can throw a stone 
 to the vilest part of the great city of New 
 York — to the region where the most squalid 
 vice and the most abject poverty and wretch- 
 edness unite to hold their orgies, fearful and 
 awful orgies too, such as the heathen might 
 shudder at, and which the Christians of this 
 city regard either as unworthy of an attempt 
 to abolish, or as beyond the reach of reme- 
 dy. Nothing ever moves me more than this 
 almost union of extremes in the city : I have 
 seen a poor blind beggar leaning against the 
 wall of the house where gorgeous magnifi- 
 cence was displaying itself in a luxurious 
 banquet, the wine of which would cost more 
 money than it would take to make that beg- 
 gar comfortable for a life-time. One of the 
 best men the world ever knew was troubled 
 at the diversities in the condition of men, 
 
92 
 
 tfFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 when he saw the wicked rolling in wealth 
 and faring sumptuously every day, while 
 the virtuous were starving. It took the 
 philosophy of the sanctuary to set his mind 
 at ease about it ; and the parable of Dives 
 and Lazarus, which the Great Teacher gave 
 us, scatters the last doubt as to the final is- 
 sue of the matter. The next world will 
 make up for all defects in this : and if we 
 are disturbed when we see the beggar lean- 
 ing against the palace of the proud sinner, 
 let us wait till the books are opened for the 
 eternal settlement of accounts. If that beg- 
 gar have the heart of Lazarus, touched with 
 the love of Him who, when here, was a 
 homeless wanderer u o'er the world's wide 
 waste," when he comes to the house not 
 made with hands, he shall rejoice in the 
 arms of angels, and sleep in the bosom of 
 Abraham. Through gates of pearl he shall 
 enter, and walk the golden streets, and reign 
 as a king and priest for ever. This may be 
 the beggar's portion, in that better land to 
 which we are hastening. 
 
CITY CHARITY. 
 
 93 
 
 Cheer up, then, lone child of poverty ! 
 Thou hast few friends in this cold world of 
 ours. The society for the relief of such as 
 thou art may have never found thee yet, 
 and we have all learned that it is unsafe to 
 give to street-beggars, so that thou mayst 
 never have another dinner while thou livest. 
 And when thou diest in the street, or in the 
 park, where thou seekest a night's lodging, 
 with Jacob's pillow under thy uncovered 
 head, the city will bury thee in Potter's 
 field, and perhaps the doctors will have thy 
 body for their knives, and thy bones for a 
 skeleton ; but then the angels will be thy 
 companions and heaven thy home, if — and 
 a great ?/it is — thou hast an interest in Him 
 who had not where to lay his head. Poor 
 beggar now ; rich beggar, blessed beggar, 
 then ! 
 
 But I believe I began this sketch with 
 the intention of speaking of various plans on 
 foot in this city to relieve the sufferings of 
 the multitude ; such an attempt will be true 
 to my original purpose, which is to show 
 
94 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 the way in which people live, and move, 
 and have their being here, in this world in 
 miniature. Last winter some one under- 
 took to make an investigation into the num- 
 ber of persons in the city of New York who 
 live on charity, or are so near to want that 
 they receive aid from the hand of the public 
 every year. The man who thus attempted 
 to take the gauge of human misery, obtained 
 returns from twenty or thirty different soci- 
 eties and institutions, some of them volunta- 
 ry and others municipal, some private and 
 others public, some religious and others not 
 so religious, and the result was such as as- 
 tonished every one. The correctness of 
 the report was called in question, and the 
 examination was made again. After all al- 
 lowances were made for mistakes and repe- 
 titions of the same name, where the appli- 
 cant had been aided by two or three soci- 
 eties, it was still impossible to resist the 
 conclusion, that as many as one person in 
 every seven in the city is thus assisted by 
 the hand of charity every year ! There is 
 
CITY CHARITY. 
 
 9b 
 
 no room for a doubt on the subject. I have 
 looked over the tables, incredulous too at 
 first, but had to give in, and admit the facts, 
 though it gave me the heart-ache. But we 
 will not rest under the painful impression, 
 that all these thousands are actually de- 
 pendent for their bread upon the bounty of 
 the benevolent. Far, very far from it. This 
 would be reducing us to a point in the scale 
 of public prosperity far below the cities of 
 Europe. But the truth is simply this: that 
 in the city New York there are multitudes 
 who earn by their daily labour just enough 
 to maintain themselves and those dependent 
 on them ; and if sickness lays its hand on 
 the head of a family, or one of the mem- 
 bers, the income ceases altogether, or is in- 
 adequate to the increased expense, and aid 
 must be obtained from abroad, or there is 
 instant suffering for want of it. Hence the 
 "dispensaries," to furnish medical advice, 
 and medicines also, to those who are too 
 poor to pay for them. 
 
 Drop in, almost every day, at one of them 
 
96 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 as you are passing, and if you are given to 
 seeking entertainment from realities, make 
 a pilgrimage to one of these dispensaries, 
 as you would to the pool of Bethesda, and 
 there you will see on long rows of benches, 
 men and women, hundreds of them crowded 
 side by side, waiting, as did they of old, not 
 for the moving of the waters, but for their 
 turn to receive attention. As rapidly as 
 their cases can be looked into, they receive 
 their written prescriptions and the order that 
 provides the needed medicine, with which 
 they hasten home, to swallow it themselves 
 or administer it perhaps to a sick child. 
 
 Yet even this sight is not half so affecting 
 as a visit will be to the almshouse depart- 
 ment in the building in the rear of the city- 
 hall. Go there of a cold morning and you 
 will see decrepit old women, forlorn young 
 women with infants in their arms, decayed 
 old men, and men with part of a leg off, 
 halt and maimed, some with a basket to get 
 a small allowance with which to eke out the 
 day. This is the most real poverty of any- 
 
CITY CHARITY. 
 
 97 
 
 thiii£ in the midst of us. In the commis- 
 sioner's room you will find a committee of 
 grave men who hear the tale of wo from 
 each new-comer; and when the truth of the 
 story has been established by as minute in- 
 quiry as is necessary or possible in the case, 
 a written order is given by which the poor 
 wretch is entitled to so many potatoes or so 
 much meat every day, and with this order 
 he or she departs rejoicing. Oh ! it must 
 be hard to be poor! God be thanked for 
 the little that keeps us above such want as 
 this. 
 
 And then I have extended my walks of 
 observation, not to speak of them as having 
 any higher end, still further, and have ex- 
 plored the hospital on Broadway, and the 
 almshouse in' the upper part of the city, 
 where the poor are provided with a home, 
 such as it is: where the corporation, in 
 times now gone, were wont on certain oc- 
 casions to have for themselves provided a 
 sumptuous feast, as if in mocking contrast 
 with the fate and the fare of the permanent 
 9 
 
9S 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 boarders of that great establishment. It 
 does one good to go there, or to such places ; 
 to see the last estate of the poor ; the refuge 
 which poverty finds when the last resource 
 of independent living has been exhausted ; 
 and he must have a very hard heart indeed, 
 who will not feel grateful that his lot has 
 been so ordered that as yet he is not an in- 
 mate of a poorhouse. Here are some who 
 have seen better days : who have lived richly 
 in the city: one or two had kept their car- 
 riages, and been envied as they shone in 
 Broadway; but fortune, as the heathen of 
 this generation call providence, disappointed 
 their hopes ; their wealth melted like snow 
 in summer; their carriages, and houses, and 
 gold, all disappeared ; and through one de- 
 gree of want to another they sank, till they 
 were housed here at last. And here we 
 may be ! I never visited even a mad-house, 
 without thinking that that might be my home 
 before I went to my last resting-place. It is 
 well to bear this in mind, and be ready for 
 the worst. 
 
CITY CHARITY. 
 
 99 
 
 There is, however, one fact that is a con- 
 solation to a man who tries to do the right 
 thing in this changing world. It is, that 
 the wilful vices of the inhabitants of these 
 refuges of the poor have reduced them to 
 this condition. Search and see. Pause 
 at the bed-side of that dying old man, and 
 if honest now, he will tell you of sin that 
 paved his walk to this end of the town. 
 Drink, strong drink, has floated thousands 
 into this snug harbor, for so it may well be 
 called by those who come from the storm- 
 tossed gulf of a drunkard's home. And 
 those whom vice has brought here, now 
 find that the way of transgressors is hard, 
 yet would they go the same gait, and reap 
 the same harvest of bitter fruit, if they had 
 life to live over again. It is not penance 
 that makes the heart better; and as braying 
 in a mortar will not beat folly out of a fool, 
 or beat sense into his head, so true is it that 
 the sufferings which vice brings with it, do 
 not make the sufferers sick of sin. They 
 seem to love it and hug it when the iron 
 
LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 enters their souls. Forgetting this princi- 
 ple, not a few modern social reformers have 
 set on foot schemes to convert criminals into 
 decent men and women, while they have 
 overlooked the inborn and inbred love of 
 sin which must be eradicated by heavenly 
 grace, before he who has been accustomed 
 to do evil will learn to do well. 
 
THE OLD LADIES. 
 
 101 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE OLD LADIES. 
 
 But I am in an episode, and will come 
 back to the thread if lean find it. On your 
 way down from the almshouse, call, in 
 Twenty-first street, at the asylum for aged 
 and respectable indigent females. The 
 matron will give you a welcome, and the 
 visit will richly reward you. This is one 
 of the pleasantest charities in the wide world. 
 It takes old ladies, so called in distinction 
 from those whom we have just seen, because 
 they have all of them been in different walks 
 of life ; in those walks to which the epithet 
 respectable is familiarly applied, though I 
 never could understand the reason why a 
 poor honest man, who had travelled one 
 road to the grave, was not just as respectable 
 as another. But then the ways of the world 
 9* 
 
102 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 are not always to be understood by every- 
 body. There are classes in society that are 
 called respectable, and it would be hard to 
 find their right to it; while others are voted 
 as low, notwithstanding claims to the respect 
 of men, which can not be disputed. I do 
 not know by what code the managers of this 
 charity decide the question of respectability, 
 but I believe they make real worth the test, 
 and that is the true one. The old woman 
 who wants their aid may have been the wife 
 of a cobbler or a senator, it matters not ; if 
 she have a good moral character, and such 
 manners as will not make her company an 
 annoyance to the rest, I suppose she will 
 be reckoned a fair subject for the exercise 
 of hospitality. There are various and very 
 wise precautions taken to guard this charity 
 against abuse, as it is easy to see that the 
 introduction of one troublesome woman 
 might make the house anything but pleasant 
 to all the rest. To prevent such a mis- 
 fortune as this, the benevolent women who 
 direct the institution receive applications in 
 
THE OLD LADIES. 
 
 103 
 
 writing from the friends of those who wish 
 to get an individual into the asylum, and 
 then the case is examined into by a visiting 
 committee, until they are satisfied she is a 
 fair subject for their consideration. She 
 then pays into the treasury, or her friends 
 pay for her, the sum of fifty dollars, as an 
 initiation fee ; which is not only something 
 to aid the funds of the institution, but is 
 also a sort of endorsement that the subject 
 has respectable connexions. So the asylum 
 is not open for paupers, but for those who, 
 having known something of the comforts of 
 life, would find a refuge to which they may 
 flee in their old age. Its doors are not open 
 to any that are under sixty years of age, and 
 this provision is wise, as will be apparent on 
 a moment's reflection. Then the applicant 
 signs a release in favor of the institution of 
 all the property she may have, which must 
 be very little, and of all the property into 
 the possession of which she may come here- 
 after: this is all right, as the asylum agrees 
 to take care of her for the remainder of her 
 
104 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 natural life, and whatever property she may 
 bring or bequeath will aid in giving the same 
 boon to others equally needy. These va- 
 rious and very reasonable preliminaries hav- 
 ing been complied with, the doors of the 
 asylum are thrown open for the reception 
 of the old lady, and she enters to begin a 
 new life, or rather, to spin out the latter end 
 of one now nearly gone. 
 
 A singular community of old crones as 
 you will find anywhere in the world, is this 
 gathering of infirm, aged, and respectable 
 females. I always had a reverence for old 
 women. There is something about them 
 that moves my heart more deeply and ten- 
 derly than the sight of an old man ; and I 
 was never, even when a boy, willing to 
 laugh with others at the bent back or hooked 
 nose that poverty and old age so often fur- 
 nish to an old woman. I would rather 
 minister to their relief, and waken a smile 
 on their wrinkled brows. To one who 
 could find any pleasure in the company of 
 the " old and childish," it will be an occa- 
 
THE OLD LADIES. 
 
 105 
 
 sion of rare interest to enter their rooms 
 and converse with them of the ways by 
 which they have been led. They are fond 
 of talking — old folks usually are; and if 
 you will sit down sociably with them, and 
 ask them of former days, and old friends, 
 they will tell you tales to which you will 
 listen with deep and fixed attention. One 
 of their greatest aqiusements now, is to visit 
 one another and talk about old times. The 
 most infirm are in rooms on the lower floors, 
 and the more active and able take the upper 
 chambers, but the most of them are strong 
 enough to get about from room to room, 
 and even up and down stairs, to make visits, 
 or to go to the dining hall. Some of them 
 also visit their friends in the city, returning 
 at a time that is agreed upon before they 
 go, that there may be no ground for anxiety 
 in consequence of their absence. Perhaps 
 you could find in no other place such a va- 
 riety of character and temper, as in this 
 little household. One has been the subject 
 of trials, disappointments, and reverses, 
 
106 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITT. 
 
 which, instead of being sanctified to her 
 spiritual improvement, have soured all the 
 springs of affection in her soul, and she is 
 now so peevish and fretful, so discontented 
 and suspicious, that nothing pleases her : 
 she finds fault with her nurse and her food, 
 her neighbours and herself, wishes she was 
 dead sometimes, and is dreadfully afraid 
 when she is a little sick lest death is indeed 
 at hand. Another has seen prosperity, and 
 has been so much accustomed to being 
 waited upon thai she has no thought of be- 
 ing able to do anything for herself : she 
 wants somebody to be running for her all the 
 time, and she thinks it very hard that she has 
 to take things as they come, as the rest do. 
 A third has found that her afflictions, pover- 
 ty, and loss of friends, have been the means 
 of weaning her affections from things below, 
 and her treasure is now in heaven ; she has 
 sweetly yielded her will to her heavenly 
 Father's, and is quietly waiting till hei 
 change comes, that she may be admitted in- 
 to the rest that remains for the people of 
 
THE OLD LADIES. 
 
 107 
 
 God. She loves not the world, but she is 
 willing to wait all the days of her appointed 
 time, and is only happier as the bright vis- 
 ion of the future opens on her dim eyes. 
 The last time I was there, I sat down in 
 her room in a low rocking-chair, with a 
 listed seat, and taking her large-printed 
 testament in my hand, I opened to the 
 fourteenth chapter of the Gospel by St. 
 John, and read: "Let not your heart be 
 troubled ; ye believe in God, believe also 
 in me. In my Father's house are many 
 mansions." — " I go to prepare a place for 
 you." I said to her, after reading a few of 
 the introductory verses: — 
 
 " Do you look forward to those mansions 
 as soon to be yours ?" 
 
 " Yes. I can read my title clear to man- 
 sions in the skies. It is now my consola- 
 tion to look up to my Father's house in 
 Heaven ; and I am very near my journey's 
 end. I shall soon be home." 
 
 " Home is a sweet word," I said to her ; 
 " have you never found it so?" 
 
108 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 44 When I was young," she said, "I had 
 a home, as bright a one as the sun evei 
 shone upon : parents and sisters and an only 
 brother : we had everything that heart could 
 ask, and a thought of sorrow never crossed 
 our minds. But what a changing world 
 this is ! Our property was swept away 
 from us by the failure of some for whom 
 my father was security, and we were torn 
 asunder to get our living the best way we 
 could. The rest of the family are dead. I 
 have struggled along one way and another, 
 and at last have found a shelter for my old 
 bones here. God has been good to me 
 always." 
 
 " When did you begin to love God and 
 serve him ?" 
 
 "I was but a child when my mother 
 taught me the way to Heaven, and I have 
 always found it good to put my trust in the 
 Lord. He has said that when my father 
 and mother forsake me, He will take me 
 up ; and when I lost the parents that would 
 have taken care of me if they had been 
 
THE OLD LADIES. 
 
 109 
 
 able, the Lord raised up other friends, and 
 they have been kind far beyond my deserts. 
 See what a nice place they have provided 
 for me now that I am old and helpless. Here 
 I am fed and clothed, nursed when I am 
 sick, waited on as if I were a lady-born, 
 and I have good company all the time, so 
 that I don't think I could be better off any- 
 where. We ought to be very thankful for 
 what the good Lord does for us in our old 
 age." 
 
 I prayed with her, and the joy which she 
 expressed as I took leave of her was enough, 
 and more than enough, to repay me for my 
 visit. Again and again she thanked me, and 
 pressed my hand within her bony fingers, 
 and asked me to come once more, and see 
 her. I intend to. It does one good to visit 
 such a house ; to mingle with those on 
 whom the hand of the Lord has pressed 
 heavily, and to see the varied influences 
 which affliction brings to bear on the human 
 heart. Some hearts it softens ; and the oil 
 of Divine grace is poured in so gently and 
 10 
 
110 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITT. 
 
 healingly, that the sufferer feels that it is 
 good to be afflicted. There is not a more 
 beautiful sight out of heaven than a bruised 
 spirit confidingly resting on Him who 
 wounds that he may heal. The Christian 
 graces thrive in such a soil, and bear ripe 
 fruit for the praise of Him whose work it is 
 to renew and save. I have known a woman 
 who has been confined to her bed forty-three 
 years — nearly the whole of her life — and 
 she lies there still, and will probably never 
 leave it till they lay her in the narrow bed 
 where all the living are yet to lie. But she 
 never murmurs. Nay, the very balm of 
 peace appears to fill her heart, as she looks 
 from her little window by the sea-side, and 
 beholds the beauty of the world from which 
 she is shut out, she rejoices in it with as 
 free a spirit as if she could leap in the sun- 
 shine, and roam the fields as she did when 
 a child. 
 
 When trials thus press us sore, and long 
 years of suffering follow years, we learn a 
 lesson of the value of Divine grace to sus- 
 
THE OLD LADIES. 
 
 Ill 
 
 tain the soul. Just now they carried by my 
 window the body, or what was left of the 
 body of a woman who has been slowly eaten 
 up with a cancer in her side. I had never 
 seen her, but have often heard of her suf- 
 ferings ; for months she has been in anguish 
 that no opiates could allay ; often gnashing 
 her teeth with pain and groaning in the ex- 
 tremity of her distress, so as to melt into 
 pity a heart of stone. But the precious 
 love of Christ was her comfort through sol- 
 itary and seemingly interminable nights of 
 pain, when unable to lie down, and of course 
 unable to sleep, she sat alone, while the in- 
 satiable disease, like the fabled vulture, 
 gnawed at her vitals. Her friends often 
 said she could not live another day in so 
 much intensity of devouring pain, but she 
 did live, and in the bitterest hours of her 
 anguish a smile would light up her wan 
 cheek, when the love of Christ was the 
 theme of remark. 
 
 " Did Jesus thus suffer, and shall I repine ?" 
 she would say when sharp pain pierced like 
 
112 
 
 LIFE IN THIS CITY 
 
 a knife between her bones. And when 
 death came, she met it, not as a relief from 
 present suffering, for she was willing to suf- 
 fer all the will of her heavenly Father, but 
 as the gate through which she should enter 
 the city and be for ever with the Lord ! 
 No more pain ! What a land must that be 
 where there is no more sorrow or suffering, 
 where the hand of love, infinite love, wipes 
 away all tears, and "the smile of ' the Lord 
 is the feast of the soul !" 
 
 One of the most natural things about 
 this establishment, the Old Ladies' Asylum, 
 is the anxiety which many feel to be buried 
 in style ! At first we would suppose that 
 they who had felt poverty for long years, 
 and had often been troubled to find the 
 wherewithal to live, would care very little 
 about the manner of their burial, yet what 
 passion is more natural, and we might say 
 universal among intelligent people. It is 
 not a vain desire, but vanity may be readily 
 excited with it, and so it surely is with these 
 ladies, who sometimes manage to retain a 
 
THE OLD LADIES. 
 
 113 
 
 little sum of money which they intrust to a 
 friend to keep closely, to be expended in 
 the purchase of a silver plate for their cof- 
 fins! And it is so expended. The name 
 of the old lady is engraved upon the silver 
 plate, the coffin is brought into the chapel, 
 and there the funeral service is held before 
 the withered remains are committed to their 
 kindred dust. This chapel is the scene of 
 many interesting services. Every sabbath- 
 day, and often in the week, as many of the 
 old ladies as can leave their rooms assemble 
 here, and listen to the word of God. It 
 was here, in this room, that the sainted 
 Milnor preached his last sermon before he 
 rested from his work, and it was a fitting 
 close to his public labours. He was a good 
 man, and it is pleasant to pause and strew a 
 flower or two upon his tomb. 
 
 As this sketch is very desultory, I will 
 finish it with a passage from real life in the 
 city, that has frequent parallels, though not 
 often is one of such decided interest made 
 a matter of record. 
 
 10* 
 
114 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 " Take that, and that !" said a drunken 
 father, as he kicked a little boy about the 
 room, when he reeled in at the close of one 
 of last winter's days. It was a drunkard's 
 home! The only alleviation — no, that is 
 not the word — the only circumstance that 
 made it supportable was, that the children 
 had never known any better days than those 
 of misery, hunger, and cold. The father 
 was a drunkard : the mother was a drunk- 
 ard, the worst of the two, if worst there could 
 be when both were at the very foot of the 
 ladder, common drunkards. A drunken 
 man is bad enough, but when vice riots in 
 a woman's heart, it makes a hell of more 
 intolerable wo. Presently the mother came 
 in, as drunk as the father, and even more 
 savage. A moment after she entered, a lit- 
 tle girl, their only daughter, came in her 
 way, and she gave her a blow that sent her 
 headlong into the fire. The poor thing was 
 shockingly burned before the miserable pa- 
 rents, in their state of intoxication, were able 
 to render her any assistance. The next day 
 
THE DRUNKARD'S HOME. 115 
 
 when the situation of the child was known, 
 she was taken to the hospital, that she might 
 receive suitable attention, though there was 
 very little prospect of saving her life. She 
 lingered along for some time, but the moth- 
 er never came near her. Some benevolent 
 ladies found the child in the hospital, and 
 learning from her where she had lived, they 
 went to see the mother, with the hope of 
 doing something for her good. They found 
 her under the influence of liquor, and of 
 course insensible to the language of kind- 
 ness. At another time they called, and 
 spoke to her of her child now dying, and 
 begged her to go and see her. She refused, 
 and said she never wanted to see her again. 
 u Can a mother forget ?" Probably the 
 love of strong drink is the only passion that 
 takes such complete possession of the soul 
 as to drown all other love. But even a 
 more cruel illustration of the effect of it was 
 to be seen in the child — she did not want 
 to see her mother. Why should she ? The 
 child had never known the sweet power of 
 
116 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 maternal tenderness, winning her heart and 
 binding her to a mother's bosom ; and when 
 she came to die in the cheerless ward of a 
 great hospital, with strangers all around her, 
 there was no yearning of the young heart 
 for the home of her childhood. There is a 
 dreadfulness about this that is distressing. 
 What a home it must be, to which a child 
 does not want to go to die ! The case of 
 this little child had attracted much attention, 
 and the ladies to whom I have already re- 
 ferred endeavoured to give her such reli- 
 gious instruction as was suited to her case, 
 but it made little or no impression. Her 
 ignorance of everything but sin was so deep 
 and impenetrable, that all attempts to lead 
 her to a sense of her situation were fruitless. 
 She was now apparently near her end : she 
 asked for a drink, and the attendant not 
 bringing it soon enough to please her, the 
 little child broke out with curses upon her, 
 to the amazement and horror of those who 
 were gathered around her. Would it be 
 believed, that one so young had reached a 
 
THB DRUNKARD'S HOME. 117 
 
 depth of depravity so fearful ! And so she 
 died. The child of a drunken mother, dy- 
 ing in an hospital with curses on her lips! 
 Here is a whole sermon in this story of a 
 few lines. And it doubtless brings out 
 more of life in the city than many pages of 
 detailed description. Hundreds of families 
 dwell in the midst of us, in whose dwellings 
 a beam of comfort, a ray of happiness, never 
 shines. It is misery in the morning, worse 
 at noon, wretchedness at night. The use 
 of strong drink is the beginning, the parent 
 of this misery. Strange, is it not, that men, 
 with reason, to say nothing of conscience, 
 will buy or sell such misery ? 
 
18 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 HOURS IN A MADHOUSE. 
 
 "Did you ever think that you would one 
 day be insane ?" said a friend of mine to me 
 the other day. 
 
 " Never," replied I, " except when I am 
 speculating upon insanity. Then I find my 
 own mind so thoroughly enchanted with the 
 subject itself, that I am tempted to think I 
 am going crazy." 
 
 It may be a morbid sympathy, but there 
 is no one class of suffering humanity to 
 which my heart goes out with more intense 
 longings for their relief, than to the inmates 
 of a lunatic asylum. The poor have their 
 sources of comfort in the soul : the sick find 
 in the kindness that is shown them a balm 
 for sorrows: the deaf, the dumb, the blind, 
 have avenues through which bliss may flow 
 
HOURS IN A MADHOUSE. 
 
 119 
 
 into their spirits ; and there is sweetness in 
 ministering to the wants and soothing the 
 woes of the sons and daughters of distress, 
 thus thrown upon our sympathies and ap- 
 pealing to us for aid. But who can minis- 
 ter to a mind diseased? How often is it 
 true that the very attempt to give joy and 
 peace to a disordered intellect is mistaken 
 for a design to injure, and the language of 
 kindness is construed into the wile of an 
 enemy ! 
 
 "Help me out of this horrid place," said 
 a lady to me the other day in the hall of an 
 asylum. She had been consigned to the 
 prison of the heart by friends who loved her 
 tenderly, and in years of love had rejoiced 
 in the beams of her supernaturally bright 
 and flashing eye. But disease had racked 
 her brain, and she was crazed ! She was 
 taken from the bosom of a once happy fami- 
 ly, any one of whom would have cheerfully 
 gone to prison in her room, and all uncon- 
 scious of the malady with which she was 
 afflicted, she was shut within the walls of 
 
120 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 the hospital for the insane. She had sense 
 enough to know that she was among the 
 mad, and when a stranger came in, she was 
 reminded of the days when she was at liber- 
 ty and home, and the thought of escape 
 seized her. 
 
 "I am not deranged," she whispered, as 
 she followed me down the corridor; "they 
 brought me here because they thought I 
 was ; but you will help me out, and I shall 
 be once more in that dear home." 
 
 I quieted her as well as I could, and 
 turned away to get out of her sight. In one 
 such case what a long tissue of associations 
 springs to mind, and how the heartstrings 
 are torn with sympathy ! Here was the 
 wife and the mother shut out from all the 
 accustomed sources of happiness in which 
 she had but recently found so much delight, 
 and with all her deprivations added to the 
 terrible thought that she was not mad. It 
 would seem to be better that she should 
 sink under the consciousness of the truths 
 than thus draw misery from the delusion 
 
HOURS IN A MADHOUSE. 
 
 121 
 
 that she was an innocent convict among the 
 condemned. 
 
 A venerable old lady was haunted with 
 the belief that she was the mother of Wash- 
 ington, and that he and the great men of 
 his time were, in spirit, her companions. 
 This illusion had possessed her mind until 
 she was no longer a suitable inmate of the 
 family, and a place was found for her in the 
 asylum. What a place was this for one in 
 the decline of life ; inured only to luxury, 
 and revelling in fancy, as she had always 
 in fact been only in the society of the ele- 
 gant and refined. But here she was a 
 queen-mother among her associates, dis- 
 daining familiar converse with any but the 
 noble shades of the departed, who came 
 thickening around her in the twilight, and 
 paying homage at her court. With a dig- 
 nified wave of her hand she bade them ap- 
 proach, and received them with majestic 
 grace, as if royalty were her daily study. 
 It was not so painful to contemplate her 
 madness; and I have been deeply interested 
 11 
 
122 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 in some of the views which Dr. Earle, of 
 the Bloomingdale asylum, has advanced 
 respecting the happiness of the insane. He 
 thinks that, as a class of people, they are 
 far from being the most miserable. He 
 treats them, too, like rational beings; gives 
 them lectures on philosophy and poetry; 
 feeds their fancy for the beautiful, the curi- 
 ous, and the great; and thus finds the means 
 of introducing into their minds some gleams 
 of sunshine to cheer the darkness that must 
 reign there with so little interruption. He 
 was walking one day in front of the asylum, 
 and a crazy woman sitting on the grass 
 said : — 
 
 " One, two, buckle my shoe." 
 
 He went on with " three, four," and she 
 matched it with a rhyme, and so on till the 
 old ditty was exhausted, and he still pursued 
 the numbers till she had made rhymes for 
 the whole of them to the neighborhood of 
 forty. Here was the effort of a philanthro- 
 pist and a philosopher to awaken thought, 
 
 connected thought, in the mind of a maniac. 
 
 i 
 
HOTTRS IN A MADHOUSE. 
 
 123 
 
 Dr. Woodward, of Worcester, and Dr. 
 Brigham, of Utica, have been very success- 
 ful also in these efforts. In fact, there is 
 no field of experiment and observation more 
 interesting than the wilderness of ruined 
 mind. We may traverse it with melan- 
 choly steps, but as there is pleasure in 
 ministering to the heirs of sorrow, there is 
 much to be reaped in these regions of blight 
 and gloom. 
 
 Never shall I forget the image which I 
 once saw through a grated door in the 
 hospital for the insane on Blackwell's island. 
 It was a child of not more than a dozen 
 years old, who had been crazed by fright ! 
 And the picture of fear was drawn on its 
 little face ! It looked up with terror toward 
 the grate, and as its wild eyes met mine, the 
 little thing uttered a scream that thrilled along 
 the fibres of the heart, and then buried its 
 face under the rags that made its bed. This 
 was a pauper child — a crazy pauper child, 
 frightened out of its wits. It is dead, doubt- 
 less, before this ; and who but would wish 
 
124 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 that death would release it from agony for 
 which life has no solace or cure ! 
 
 Dr. Earle is fond of rousing his lunatic 
 patients, or rather of tempting them to the 
 exercise of faculties such as they have, that 
 they may at once find pleasure and im- 
 provement in such pursuits. 
 
 But the most rational exercise for the 
 insane is that of dancing. If it was impos- 
 sible always for me to understand how sen- 
 sible people could spend their time in dan- 
 cing, there seemed to be something very ap- 
 propriate in the amusement for crazy ones. 
 It was therefore with great pleasure that I 
 
 accepted an invitation to a ball at the 
 
 asylum, the only ball I ever attended in my 
 life. There were few guests besides the 
 inmates of the establishment. To them the 
 eveninghad been a source of high enjoyment 
 in prospect, and their delight when at last 
 the long-wished hour had come, was prob- 
 ably never exceeded by the pleasure of the 
 most confirmed ball-goers among the sound- 
 mioded inhabitants of our city. The gentle- 
 
HOURS IN A MADHOUSE. 125 
 
 man and lady lunatics had dressed them- 
 selves for the occasion in their very best; 
 and now and then a peculiar fantastic style 
 of head-gear discovered that the head be- 
 neath it was out of order ; yet even these 
 indications of insanity were not more nu- 
 merous than would be seen in a company 
 of equal number out of the asylum and in a 
 ball-room. The music was by a mad-band ! 
 Think of that ! Music hath charms even 
 for the insane ; and we bless God that there 
 are chords in the soul that will vibrate har- 
 moniously when reason is dethroned. And 
 when the music struck up and the partners 
 took their places on the floor, it was in the 
 highest degree amusing to contemplate the 
 gravity with which these lunatic dancers 
 entered upon the mirthful business of the 
 evening. Not being familiar with the art, I 
 can not say how skilfully they went through 
 the evolutions of the floor, nor whether their 
 performances were in all respects as elegant 
 as are seen at the city assemblies ; but that 
 there was ever a happier ball, or a more 
 11* 
 
126 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 profitable one than this, I doubt exceeding- 
 ly. The amusement seemed commensurate 
 with the capacities of the company ; and if 
 my fair readers who are fond of dancing 
 will pardon me for making a clean breast, 
 I will confess that I think dancing a very 
 suitable amusement for the insane, and for 
 them only. Let those who have no heads 
 cultivate their heels. 
 
 Preaching to the insane is a pleasant and 
 very useful exercise. I do not know how 
 far the investigations of modern science 
 have gone in search of the nature of in- 
 sanity, but there is a delightful source of 
 comfort to me in the fact that to nearly all 
 the insane the gospel seems to be able to 
 give consolation. They listen with interest : 
 they feel the power of it on their hearts ; 
 they rejoice in its joyful sound; they want 
 to hear it again. 
 
 I have been greatly interested in some 
 cases of insanity furnished by Dr. Earle, 
 and published in the American Journal, 
 which is conducted by the officers of the 
 
HOURS IN A MAD HOUSE. 
 
 127 
 
 Utica asylum. The writer mentions sev- 
 eral curious instances of delusion, only one 
 or two of which I can copy. 
 
 " A young lady, while paying a visit to 
 some of her friends, in a section of the 
 country very remote from her home, became 
 concerned for the welfare of her soul, and 
 after much anxiety, tribulation, and suffer- 
 ing, was made happy by a revelation of the 
 whole plan of salvation. This clearness 
 of spiritual vision was afterward withdrawn 
 for a time, but she was again made to re- 
 joice at its return. On the night of this 
 second revelation, she perceived distinctly 
 delineated upon the wall of her room a fig- 
 ure like that of the Saviour, but without 
 hands. On the following night, as she was 
 lying down and earnestly engaged in prayer, 
 she felt herself lifted from her bed, and a 
 convulsive spasm shook her whole frame. 
 This was repeated, and at length she was 
 lifted up and borne away on a cloud, while 
 surrounding harps filled the air with melody. 
 
 " Her voice, heretofore tremulous and 
 
128 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 husky, now became strong and delightfully 
 harmonious. About this time, as she was 
 lying in bed, singing, she saw upon the 
 ceiling a shadowy arm waving to and fro. 
 Her happiness was ecstatic, and she con- 
 tinued to sing. She now lived in continual 
 bliss. Every time she prayed she beheld a 
 vision, generally a window, with clouds 
 passing before it. She could pray with 
 much greater facility than at any previous 
 period of her life. One night, on retiring, 
 she placed her watch at the head of the 
 bed. She soon heard a noise, like the 
 cracking of glass, and the watch stopped. 
 A ' breathing' was heard at the head of the 
 bed, and when it ceased the watch again 
 commenced running. From this and from 
 the former incidents which have been rela- 
 ted, she became convinced that she was a 
 supernatural being. She thought herself 
 selected to be the bride of the Saviour. 
 Her body was shaken with spasmodic tre- 
 mour, and her limbs involuntarily assumed 
 an attitude making the form of the cross. 
 
HOURS IN A MAD HOUSE. 
 
 129 
 
 While lying in this position, she felt as if 
 wafted away upon a cloud ; but at length a 
 poinard was thrust into her side, withdrawn, 
 and the stroke repeated. Her sleep was 
 refreshing. In the morning she found the 
 minute-hand of her watch split; and, upon 
 placing the watch in her belt, it stopped. 
 Looking through the window, she perceived 
 the whole universe to be a scene of agita- 
 tion and commotion. Although the sun 
 shone brightly, rain was descending in tor- 
 rents, and the wind blowing with the terrific 
 force of a hurricane. The millenium, as 
 she believed, was at hand! She threw her- 
 self upon the bed. The music of a march- 
 ing army delighted her ears ; and every 
 time she breathed, the curtains of the win- 
 dows waved. 
 
 " A few days after this she wrote letters 
 to her friends, and on the following morning 
 found some of the ' strong expressions' in 
 them marked with figures like the characters 
 of stenography. She told her acquaintance 
 that she believed they were made by God. 
 
130 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 The letters were now sealed, but not for- 
 warded. The next day, a gentleman having 
 called to whom she wished to read them, 
 they opened without effort, as if they had 
 not been sealed. 
 
 " She now began to visit the sick, believ- 
 ing that her touch would restore them, and 
 bearing in mind the following texts of Scrip- 
 ture : Matt. xxi. 21; Mark xi. 23 ; Luke 
 xvii. 6. She also spent hours in looking at 
 the clouds, firmly convinced that she should 
 be translated, like Enoch, to heaven. One 
 day she preached an hour in the open air, 
 expecting every moment to behold the re- 
 ality of the scene delineated by West, in 
 his picture of Death upon the Pale Horse. 
 Much accustomed to going abroad, she had 
 become tanned, and then perceived that her 
 countenance bore a strong resemblance to 
 that of a picture which she had seen of the 
 virgin Mary, painted by an Italian artist. 
 Not long afterward she beheld a halo of 
 light encircling her head, such as is repre- 
 sented in the pictures of the Saviour. 
 
HOURS IN A MADHOUSE. 
 
 131 
 
 " She became the centre of attraction ; 
 1 the observed of all observers.' The chil- 
 dren of the neighbourhood, even the dogs, 
 followed her, and she was compelled to 
 lock the door of her chamber, to keep the 
 chickens from coming in. 
 
 " While on board the steamboat, return- 
 ing to her home, she believed that Christ 
 was upon earth, and that the dead were 
 awakened and rising from their graves. 
 Among the passengers she recognised St. 
 John the Divine, and two of the apostles. 
 She imagined herself to be Mary Magdalene, 
 and her father (who had been dead several 
 years) Simon Peter. During the night pre- 
 ceding the day on which she debarked, she 
 was awakened by the hissing of serpents, 
 and the roaring and rushing of a waterfall. 
 The reptiles were crawling over her, and 
 encircling her in their coils. She thought 
 that the general and final convulsion of cre- 
 ation had commenced, calmly closed her 
 eyes, felt as if borne away upon a cloud, 
 and, after the lapse of half an hour, during 
 
132 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 which the sounds of the last throes and ag- 
 ony of expiring nature were continued, an 
 angel's seal was pressed upon her forehead. 
 By this signet she would be recognised 
 among the heavenly host. 
 
 " At one place where the boat touched, 
 she saw several of her former acquaintances, 
 who had risen from the dead. Among the 
 crowd she observed a large and apparently 
 most powerful man, * wearing a blue navy 
 shirt, and a light cap.' This, she believed, 
 was Christ. 
 
 " She left the boat at a large town, and 
 stopped at a hotel. At the supper-table, and 
 on the following morning, at breakfast, were 
 three men, one of them very similar in ap- 
 pearance to her deceased father. On the 
 latter occasion, as she looked at the person 
 last mentioned, his eyeballs glared like fire, 
 and she became convinced that he was God, 
 and his companions the Son and the Holy 
 Ghost. They were the true Trinity. 
 
 "Proceeding in another boat toward 
 home, she saw, upon the surface of the 
 
HOURS IN A MADHOUSE. 
 
 133 
 
 river, the reflection of a large army in heav- 
 en, many of the horsemen being clad in 
 mail, and leaning forward upon the necks 
 of their chargers. For several days in suc- 
 cession she felt rain descending from heaven 
 upon her face. Once as she looked up- 
 ward it did not descend. She prayed fer- 
 vently, again looked up, and her prayer 
 was answered by the falling rain. 
 
 " Among the ornaments worn by her, 
 were a valuable ring, a pencil-case, and a 
 watch, all of gold, and gifts of her deceased 
 father. Upon being asked by a clergyman, 
 who was a fellow-passenger, if she believed 
 it proper to wear jewels, she was immedi- 
 ately seized with compunction for her trans- 
 gressions in this respect. Carved upon the 
 watch there was a serpent, whose eye was 
 represented by an emerald. She looked 
 upon it, and the eye glared at her with a 
 light so fearful, so hideous, and so brilliant, 
 that she was unable to withstand its power. 
 Determined to sever the last link by which 
 she was bound to earth, she seized the ring, 
 12 
 
134 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 the pencil-case, and the watch, and threw 
 them overboard into the river." 
 
 Those who are interested in the statistics 
 of insanity, and those who are fond of pur- 
 suing inquiries into the fields which the 
 subject opens, will discern much to gratify 
 their curiosity in the report of the managers 
 of the New York State Lunatic Asylum, 
 made to the legislature in January last. 
 There have been 553 patients in that, asy- 
 lum during the year, and the treatment has 
 been so successful, that, of the 268 dis- 
 charged, all but 34 were either cured or 
 improved, and more than one half were pro- 
 nounced entirely recovered. Of the 285 
 remaining at the end of the year, there were 
 143 men and 142 women, a singular in- 
 stance of equality in the number from the 
 sexes. Of the persons in the asylum the 
 past year, 4 were clergymen ; 11 were law- 
 yers ; 18 were teachers ; 6 were boys, and 
 27 girls, in school ; 344 were females em- 
 ployed in housework, that is, I suppose, 
 females accustomed to attend to their own 
 
HOURS IN A MADHOUSE. 
 
 135 
 
 domestic concerns. It is a curious fact, 
 that at this institution more married persons 
 than single ones are received, while the re- 
 verse is true of almost all other lunatic asy- 
 lums. 
 
 The causes of insanity are worthy of 
 special attention. One man is set down as 
 made crazy by " preaching sixteen days and 
 nights;" and the only wonder is, that it did 
 not make the people crazy too. Religious 
 anxiety is assigned as the cause in 102 ca- 
 ses ! Millerism in 19 cases, and that, too, 
 in 1S45, two years after Millerism had ex- 
 pired by its own arithmetic. In a large 
 number of cases the disease is hereditary 
 — a terrible entailment; and when the in- 
 stances are so numerous of its transmission, 
 it may well suggest the high importance of 
 precautionary measures in the cases of those 
 who have any reason to anticipate the in- 
 heritance. Twelve women are in the asy- 
 lum by the " abuse of husbands ;" thirteen 
 men, and only five women, from " disap- 
 pointment in love." 
 
136 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 I would extend this compilation much 
 further, but for the fear that others will 
 not find the same interest in the study 
 that I do. And I can not more appropri- 
 ately bring this article to a close than by 
 quoting from Dr. Earle, to whose labors I 
 have already referred ; whose writing dis- 
 covers the scholar as readily as his success 
 demonstrates his ability and knowledge in 
 his peculiar profession. Speaking of insan- 
 ity, and the means of its cure, he says : — 
 
 " No palliation, no specious argument, no 
 artificial gloss, can divest it of its deformity, 
 or conceal its melancholy horrors. Beneath 
 its sway reason is deprived of her throne, 
 and alienated from her empire ; the most 
 glorious attribute of man is, for the time, 
 destroyed ; the distinctive characteristic of 
 our race is obliterated, and he who was 
 * exalted to the heavens,' is brought down 
 to the earth. Yet often, in its most pro- 
 tracted forms, when years, both many and 
 long, have rolled away beneath its influence, 
 when the sands in the glass of time are near- 
 
HOURS IN A MADHOUSE. 137 
 
 ly spent, and the flame of life is flickering 
 toward extinction, the mind rises superior 
 to the power which has crushed it, and, like 
 the sun at the close of a clouded day, shines 
 forth in the brightness and beauty of its pri- 
 meval lustre. ' So blessings brighten ere 
 they take their flight.' And when this re- 
 sumption of the throne of reason does not 
 occur in life, it is a blessed consolation of 
 the Christian's faith, that the trammels of 
 earth can not be borne beyond the grave ; 
 that, when the 1 silver cord is loosed, and 
 the golden bowl is broken,' all the dross 
 that dimmed and tarnished the lustre of the 
 soul shall be severed from that spiritual es- 
 sence, and it shall stand, as stand the souls 
 of those more fortunate in their temporal 
 existence, before a tribunal of unerring jus- 
 tice, in the realm where Love, and Life, 
 and Light, a glorious triune, eternal as the 
 Power from which they sprang, shall oblit- 
 erate the shadowed past, in the effulgence 
 and beatitude of the present." 
 
 12* 
 
138 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE WOMAN WHO WANTED TO BE TURNED ! 
 
 In the midst of those pleasures that clus- 
 ter thick about the fireside, I was forgetting 
 the outer world, when the door-bell rang, 
 and presently the servant announced that a 
 woman wished to see me. I stepped into 
 the hall, and there was standing in the door 
 a pretty woman of perhaps five-and-twenty 
 years, who said to me, in a brogue that left 
 no doubt of her being from the Emerald 
 isle: — 
 
 "Are you the p-aist ?" 
 
 I told her I was a minister, and asked if 
 I could be of any service to her. She 
 looked at me with great seriousness, and 
 said : — 
 
 " I want to be turned." 
 
 " What did you say?" said I, supposing 
 I must have misunderstood her. 
 
THE WOMAN WHO WANTED TO BE TURNED ! 139 
 
 " I want to be turned," said she again, 
 with the same fixed countenance, but with 
 a still more imploring tone. 
 
 I was considerably puzzled ; for, in the 
 variety of applications which are made to 
 me here in the city, this was the first time 
 that I had ever been called on for such a 
 purpose, and I looked at her with such per- 
 plexity, that she evidently saw I had not 
 comprehended her meaning. I said to 
 her : — 
 
 '* My good woman, I should be glad to 
 help you, if it were in my power ; but real- 
 ly, I do not exactly know what you would 
 have." 
 
 She looked up with still deeper interest 
 than before, and exclaimed : — 
 
 " And I'm a catholic, and I want to be 
 turned into a protestant, and they told me 
 you were good at turning people, and so 
 I thought I would come and see if you 
 wouldn't just be so good as to please to 
 Uirn me." 
 
 It struck me at first that it could hardly 
 
140 LIFE IN THE CITT. 
 
 be true, that anybody should send a woman 
 to me on such an errand, for there were 
 certainly very many around me much better 
 able to turn catholics into protestants than I 
 am ; but there was that in the woman's air 
 and tone that put all idea of imposition out 
 of the question ; and she stood before me a 
 poor Roman catholic, asking to be put in 
 the way of knowing the truth and finding 
 eternal life. I, therefore, inquired into her 
 circumstances, her means of instruction, the 
 motives that led to her present step ; and 
 she told me, with great simplicity, that her 
 husband was a protestant, who read his 
 bible daily, but she had "fought" him, and 
 tried to stop him, for she had been taught 
 that they must not read the Bible ; but he 
 seemed to be very happy, while she was very 
 miserable, and she thought he was in the 
 right way and she was in the wrong. She 
 had heard him read some in the Bible, but 
 she had no learning, and could not under- 
 stand much ; but he knew all about it, and 
 had tried to explain it to heF. And she 
 
* 
 
 TEE WOMAN WHO WANTED TO BE TURNED ! 141 
 
 thought if she should be a protestant, like 
 her husband, they would take a great deal 
 more comfort, and so she begged me to 
 take pity on her, and turn her into a prot- 
 estant, and she would never be a catholic 
 any more, at all, at all. 
 
 I then attempted to converse with her on 
 some of the simplest truths of religion, the 
 way of salvation by the merits of the Sav- 
 iour, and the need of repentance and faith ; 
 but she had no conception of the existence, 
 much less of the nature, of the plainest doc- 
 trines of the gospel. Her ignorance was 
 total and frightful. It seemed incredible 
 that a person could live in a Christian 
 land and know so little of religion. After 
 conversing with her freely, and setting be- 
 fore her the difference in doctrine between 
 Roman catholics and protestants, I asked 
 her : — 
 
 " Do you now sincerely renounce the 
 errors of the Roman catholic religion, and 
 promise never to go after them again so long 
 as you live V 
 
142 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITST. 
 
 " And that's what I do, with all my 
 heart" 
 
 " Now," said I, " go home and tell youi 
 husband that you have become a protestant, 
 and do you go to church with him, and go 
 to the minister who preaches to him, and 
 tell him what you have done." 
 
 " But," said she, " can't you give me a 
 little bit of a line, just to show them all about 
 it. Do give it me." 
 
 1 went back into the house, and taking a 
 large book, I wrote on the blank leaf a for- 
 mal renunciation of popery, and, having read 
 it to her, asked her to sign it. She did so, 
 making her mark, after I had written her 
 name. I then made out a regular certifi- 
 cate of the fact, that she had appeared be- 
 fore me, and abjured the pope of Rome, 
 the devil, and all their works, and put it in- 
 to her hands. She expressed her gratitude 
 in simple words, and as she turned to go 
 away she looked back, and said : — 
 
 "And I'll come next week, and confess." 
 
 "Oh, no," I said to her '> " confess t© 
 
THE WOMAN WHO WANTED TO BE TURNED ! 143 
 
 God. We don't confess to the priest in 
 our church." 
 
 " But I must confess my sins ; I want 
 to come once a week and confess to you." 
 
 11 Not a bit of it, my dear woman ; I will 
 never let you do any such thing at all. You 
 must pray to God for the sake of Jesus 
 Christ ; he has power to forgive sins, and 
 no one else. All the priests in the world 
 can do you no good, unless you repent and 
 cry unto God." 
 
 So she went her way, declaring that she 
 should come again. 
 
 I have told this story as one of the many 
 • incidents of life in the city ; but more to 
 show the deep degradation of the poor Irish 
 whom Providence has thrown at our very 
 doors. What an awful load of guilt must that 
 priesthood incur, that crushes the souls of 
 its people under ignorance so rayless and 
 hopeless ! I suppose a Roman catholic 
 may, like Fenelon, find saving truth in the 
 midst of the errors of that system ; but how 
 few Fenelons, how few Christians, can you 
 find in the bosom of antichrist ! 
 
144 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CRIME IN THE CITY. 
 
 Reader, you have no heart, perhaps, 
 for a chapter of crime. Shall we then pass 
 the subject and consider another and pleas- 
 anter? Just as you please, but to describe 
 this city and say nothing of its vices, would 
 be to write a history of the American revo- 
 lution and say nothing of Benedict Arnold, 
 because his was a very unpleasant chapter , 
 in that same history. 
 
 I had great difficulty in arriving at the 
 truth with respect to the pauperism of the 
 city. I have greater in making an approach 
 toward the truth in reference to its vice. 
 Some poverty loves to show itself — all 
 poverty is more likely to be relieved by be- 
 ing known. Vice hides itself; the only 
 plant that grows and loves to grow in the 
 
CRIME IN THE CITY. 
 
 145 
 
 dark. How shall we get at it, and take its 
 gauge. I can tell how many criminal trials 
 there have been in this city within the last 
 year, and in any year of many past ; but 
 there have not been half as many as there 
 ought to have been. I could tell you how 
 many have been sent to stateprison, but 
 I have not a doubt there are thousands now 
 at large who ought to be with them, or in 
 the places of some of them. Then there is 
 vice here that the law winks at, or never 
 meddles with; festering vice; worse than 
 festering, cancerous on the vitals of society ; 
 preying upon it ravenously, yet never dis- 
 turbed; and then there is vice here which 
 the law can not reach, above law and never 
 to be reclaimed till men, one by one, are 
 made better by the power of God's grace 
 and truth. For some of this vice the law 
 has no remedy : not even a piece of stick- 
 ing plaster. It riots and rots here in the 
 face of men, it " smells to heaven," and who 
 cares? 
 
 I have been amazed to see how indifferent 
 13 
 
146 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 we are to crime in the city, how soon we 
 forget, and sometimes how willing we are 
 to spread a thick covering over it and 
 " make believe" that it is all right. You 
 recollect that sometime ago a man was shot 
 dead in Leonard street near Broadway just 
 in the edge of evening. This was three 
 years ago. I saw the blood of the murder- 
 ed man yet fresh on the wmite snow. Hun- 
 dreds of people must have been passing, 
 and it would seem impossible that the deed 
 could be done without detection. Well, 
 there was a great hue and cry raised about 
 it. They said a woman shot him, and one 
 was arrested and examined, and nothing 
 being proved against her she was discharged, 
 and there was an end of the matter. The 
 very fact is almost forgotten, and who 
 cares? 
 
 I should like to tell you of the private 
 history of another shooting affair that took 
 place in our streets some time ago, but per- 
 haps I had better not. If I should tell you 
 that one gentleman seduced a young lady 
 
CRIME IN THE CITY. 
 
 147 
 
 under promise of marriage, and a friend of 
 his seduced her away from him, and the 
 first seducer spit in the face of the second, 
 and the second shot the first, it would give 
 a virtuous country gentleman such an idea 
 of our city morals as I should be ashamed 
 of, and therefore I will tell you nothing 
 about it. Yet these are facts, and only 
 the outside facts of a tale of misery and 
 damnable villany that perfectly vindicates 
 the righteous justice of hell-fire, if for no 
 other purpose than to burn eternally one 
 single class of sinners whom God suffers to 
 walk on his footstool and pollute his ear, 
 for some purpose inscrutable but doubtless 
 wise. " Wherefore do the wicked live?" 
 
 " The Egyptian* tombs." — Striking 
 up Centre street northeast from the city-hall, 
 you soon come to an immensely broad and 
 dismally low building, in the Egyptian style 
 of architecture, something like a decapitated 
 pyramid, spreading from Leonard to Frank- 
 lin and from Centre back to Elm street, 
 as gloomy in its aspect as if Melancholy had 
 
148 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 conceived the plan and Despair built it for 
 her own amusement. I have a volume in 
 which it is described as " a unique and 
 beautiful building ;" unique it certainly is, 
 being in the likeness of nothing that was, 
 is, or will be; but the beauty of it must be 
 with that of some other things and folks 
 called handsome, but which to my poor 
 vision was always invisible. It stands in a 
 horrid part of the city, where the ground is 
 low, and, with or without reason, it has been 
 rumored that on account of the dampness 
 it is not a suitable place even for villains. 
 I know the cells are cold, for I have been 
 there, but of this more anon. It is 200 feet 
 wide, and 250 feet long; the front or main 
 building being occupied for the various and 
 appropriate purposes of " halls of jus- 
 tice," and the outer portion is a lofty wall 
 surrounding the buildingcontaining225 cells 
 for prisoners. This is called the " house of 
 detention," and here are confined those who 
 are awaiting their trial, those under sentence 
 of death, and others who are sentenced for 
 
CRIME IN THE CITY. 
 
 149 
 
 a period too short to render their confine- 
 ment necessary in the penitentiary or state- 
 prison. 
 
 In the main building, at the right hand of 
 the area to which you ascend from the street 
 by a flight of steps, is the police-office. You 
 must not fail to drop in, if for a moment on- 
 ly, to see "Old Hays," of whom you have 
 heard ever since you were a boy. He is 
 high constable yet, a Jew, regularly attends 
 Dr. M'Elroy's (presbyterian) congregation, 
 and his eye and his history are worth the 
 study of a philosopher. Cool, cunning, and 
 courageous, he has been the terror of rogues 
 in New York for half a century. It is won- 
 derful with what sagacity the officers of our 
 city police sometimes ferret out criminals and 
 bring them to justice. I say sometimes, and 
 at others they seem to draw a net like those 
 they use in Long Island sound to catch 
 moss bunkers for manure. It is made for 
 little fish only, and sometimes when hauling 
 in they find that a shark is enclosed, and 
 they are afraid to close in upon him lest he 
 13* 
 
150 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 should let himself out without permission 
 and take all "the catch" with him. So big 
 rogues are often suffered to run at large, 
 while the small fry are caught in shoals. A 
 few days ago a nest of counterfeiters was 
 neatly broken up. Two young men were 
 known to go to a room in a boarding-house 
 in Prince street, at a certain hour every day 
 and there to remain in silence for some 
 hours. Their motions were watched with 
 more vigilance than we imagine to be cus- 
 tomary in a free country, until the police- 
 officers walked through the door rather sud- 
 denly, and found the gentlemen very in- 
 dustriously pursuing their business of coun- 
 terfeiting ; their tools, stock in trade, &c, 
 were seized, and they were provided with 
 lodgings in the " Tombs," whence they will 
 soon be transferred to a country residence 
 on the Hudson, near Sing-Sing. 
 
 This police-office is a schoolhouse where 
 a thinking man will learn strange lessons of 
 life in New York. [ have now and then 
 walked in and leaned against the bar, while 
 
CHIME IN THE CITY. 
 
 151 
 
 the victims have one after another been 
 brought up, examined, committed, &c, 
 with such rapidity of execution that it 
 seemed dangerous to stay in that neighbour- 
 hood. Last week, as I was passing, I saw 
 a man, the worse for liquor, amusing the 
 bystanders with his drunken humour. Pres- 
 ently two constables marched him into the 
 police-office, and placed him on a bench ; 
 the justice asked him his name, and with 
 mock gravity the fellow spelled it for him, 
 letter by letter; the justice filled out a blank 
 paper of the size of your hand, and in five 
 minutes from the time he was dancing in the 
 street, he was meditating in the " Tombs." 
 
152 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 VISIT TO A PIRATE'S CELL. 
 
 A few months ago, I visited the Egyp- 
 tian sepulchre of a prison, before de- 
 scribed. The watch department is about 
 as gloomy a spot as can be found anywhere 
 above ground ; and the quarters where 
 night-stragglers and rowdies are lodged, are 
 sufficiently forbidding to evil-doers, one 
 would think, to render them very unpopular. 
 It is therefore a matter of wonder that so 
 many find accommodations there at night, 
 and, not satisfied, come again. The prison 
 is a long building, with four tiers of cells, 
 with a gallery running round the prison, in 
 which the inmates are allowed to walk oc- 
 casionally. As I entered, I saw a young 
 man sitting up in the second tier, reading a 
 
VISIT TO A PIRATE'S CELL. 
 
 153 
 
 newspaper ; he rose at once from his seat, 
 stepped into the cell, and shut the door. 
 The keeper said it was Babe, the pirate. 
 You have heard of him. He was convicted 
 of piracy and murder on board the Lavinia 
 some time 'ago, and had been sentenced to 
 death, and twice respited by the president 
 of the United States, in consequence of his 
 declaration that he could produce a witness 
 to establish his innocence. But the witness 
 has never made his appearance. It has 
 been stated in some of the papers, that 
 he has respectable relatives living in this 
 city, who are not aware of his existence, 
 and should I mention the name of the man 
 whose son he was said to be, you would 
 drop the book, and start to your feet. I 
 walked by the cell several times ; he kept 
 the door closed, and evidently was deter- 
 mined not to be gazed at. But I could not 
 come away without an effort at least to have 
 some conversation with one thus shut out 
 from the world, and doomed to die. Per- 
 haps, thought I, he may be willing to listen 
 
154 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 to the voice of one who has no other errand 
 to his cell than to do him good ; perhaps I 
 may reach his heart. At any rate I will 
 try. I said to the keeper : — 
 
 " Will you go to Babe's cell, and tell 
 him that a young clergyman would be 
 pleased to converse with him a few mo- 
 ments ?" 
 
 The keeper returned with word that 
 " Babe would be very happy to see me." 
 
 I passed through the low portal, and 
 down a single step ; he swung the iron 
 door back to its place, and I was alone 
 with the pirate in his cell. 
 
 A strange feeling crept over me for a 
 moment. I had often stood at the grate of 
 the doors in the stateprison, and talked 
 with criminals, but this being closeted with 
 a pirate was new to me, and it took an in- 
 stant to recover. I shook hands with the 
 prisoner, as he rose from his bunk behind 
 the door, and very pleasantly expressed his 
 pleasure in seeing me there. As I took off 
 my hat, he begged me to keep it on, as the 
 
VISIT TO A PIRATE'S CELL. 
 
 155 
 
 cell was cool, and I might take cold; and 
 taking the only chair his narrow quarters 
 would admit, I sat down in front of him, 
 and entered at once into familiar conversa- 
 tion with the man whose name had been as- 
 sociated in my mind with a loathsome mon- 
 ster of depravity and blood. Before me 
 was sitting a young man of about twenty- 
 two, tall, well-formed, with a bright eye 
 and intelligent face, fluent of speech, and 
 with a brogue indicative of foreign birth, 
 having the marks of one who had not been 
 accustomed to hard fare all his days ; and 
 as I looked on him — pardon me for the 
 weakness — my heart went out after him, 
 and I wanted to win him back to virtue and 
 to peace. I said to him : — 
 
 II My dear sir, it is no motive of idle cu- 
 riosity that has brought me here. T feel a 
 deep interest in your welfare, and would 
 speak with you concerning your precious 
 soul." 
 
 II I am glad to see you," he said, and I 
 continued : — 
 
156 
 
 HFE TS THE CITY. 
 
 " When you look forward to another 
 world, what are your prospects, and what 
 views do you entertain as to your future 
 state ?" 
 
 " My views," said he, with great prompt- 
 ness, and an air of coolness that chilled me, 
 " my views, I suppose, are very much the 
 same as yours, or those of any other man." 
 
 " But," said I, " there is a great diver- 
 sity of sentiment among men as to their fu- 
 ture state. Do you feel at peace with God, 
 and prepared to meet him in judgment ?" 
 
 " My mind is as much at ease as that of 
 any other man in the city of New York," 
 he replied, with firmness and energy ; and 
 then raising his arms and extending his 
 clenched fists toward me, he added: "But 
 do you suppose I can be at peace, when a 
 set of bloodhounds are pursuing me, deter- 
 mined to take my life. I am as innocent of 
 the crime for which I am shut up here and 
 sentenced to be hanged, as you are, but" — 
 
 And then he went on with protestations 
 of innocence and denunciations of his ene- 
 
VISIT TO A PIRATE S CELL. 
 
 157 
 
 mies, till he became furious in his gesticu- 
 lations, brandishing his arms, as if he would 
 love to have vengeance. I tried to calm 
 him. 
 
 " Supposing you are innocent of this 
 crime — and I am not here to ask or hear 
 anything about that — does not your past life 
 afford the most abundant occasion for re- 
 pentance of sin, and do you not see the 
 need of finding forgiveness before you can 
 be at peace with your Maker V* 
 
 He admitted this truth, and I went on to 
 set before him, in direct terms, the nature 
 of sin, and the way of life through Jesus 
 Christ. He listened with attention, but as 
 soon as I gave him a chance to reply he 
 fell into his former strain. And then he 
 alluded, of his own accord, to his friends. 
 
 " I have respectable relatives living in 
 this city ; but they do not know that I am 
 here, and should not, if I were to die to- 
 morrow." 
 
 11 But do you not wrong yourself by thus 
 14 
 
158 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 concealing your name from your friends, 
 who might be of service to you ?" 
 
 " I know I do wrong ; but if I am to be 
 hanged, my friends shall never have the dis- 
 grace of it." 
 
 I spent some fifteen or twenty minutes in 
 this conversation ; and, after commending 
 him earnestly to the Saviour, and begging 
 him to turn his thoughts away from others, 
 and seek to be reconciled to God, I shook 
 hands with him, and receiving his repeated 
 thanks for my visit, I left him. 
 
 Since my visit to his cell, this youth has 
 been pardoned by the president of the 
 United States, and is now abroad on the 
 wide world. 
 
STATISTIC. OF VICE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 STATISTICS OF VICE, AND REFLECTIONS THEREON. 
 
 Of the causes of crime in this city, there 
 are two worthy of distinct mention — intem- 
 perance and licentiousness. I call them 
 causes of crime, yet why are they not writ- 
 ten crimes in the law-books, and punished 
 as such ? I have asked a question hard to 
 be answered, but which I mean to answer 
 before I drop the subject. 
 
 To make laws to punish theft and mur- 
 der, while intemperance and licentiousness 
 are licensed or winked at by law, is about 
 as rational political economy as it would be 
 for the state to employ the Eccolabeion or 
 egg-hatching machine, and set it at work, 
 with three thousand more ovens of the same 
 sort, to hatch rattlesnakes, which shoukl be 
 permitted to escape into the streets, and then 
 
160 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 offer a reward for their destruction. The 
 government first sits upon the nest of crim- 
 inal eggs, and when the whole swarm has 
 been hatched into life and motion, it sends 
 its agents to catch a few of them, and now 
 and then it hangs one of its own victims. 
 Does this sound like the anti-government 
 preaching of the present day ? Quite the 
 reverse. Because I love a strong govern- 
 ment, that shall protect society, begin at the 
 beginning of things, and lay its hand on the 
 springs of crime, I set this error in this new 
 and odious light. Think of the startling 
 fact, that the mayor and corporation of the 
 city of New York have licensed 3,116 per- 
 sons to sell ardent spirits in the last year, 
 and probably as many more sell without li- 
 cense, and the government pays no attention 
 to the evil ! And when the natural result 
 of this traffic appears iri the pauperism and 
 crime of the city, so fearful that the truth is 
 not believed when you tell it, then the com- 
 mon council talk of a new police system, 
 and more vigilance, and all that, as if they 
 
STATISTICS OF VICE. 
 
 161 
 
 were really in earnest, to guard the morals, 
 and property, and lives, of those who pay the 
 taxes ! This is the " penny-wise and pound- 
 foolish" policy which all government exhib- 
 its in our country, and I doubt not that the 
 government of the city of New York is as 
 wise, pure, and efficient, as any other. 
 
 So of the licentiousness of the city. Of 
 all anomalies in legislation, the indifference 
 of government and of society to this evil is 
 the strangest. Pauperism runs back to in- 
 temperance as its source ; but I have not a 
 doubt that with the crimes of this city, pun- 
 ishable by law, the vice of licentiousness is 
 a far more fruitful source than you imagine. 
 To obtain the means of sinful indulgence, 
 the young are tempted continually to crime; 
 indulgence sears the conscience, and steals 
 the sensibilities of the soul more rapidly and 
 fatally than any other vice, and the avenues 
 to this vice are so many, alluring, and de- 
 ceitful, that he would be the reformer of the 
 age, and worthy of a monument of Parian 
 marble, who shall devise a remedy to arrest 
 14* 
 
162 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 the evil. But this parent of vice is toler- 
 ated in our city, licensed in others, and 
 treated in all as a necessary sore, to be kept 
 running on the body of society. 
 
 The police-office is open before daylight 
 every morning, when a magistrate is present 
 to dispose of prisoners arrested during the 
 night ; and this court is in session constant- 
 ly until sunset. There are two offices, the 
 upper and lower. In 1842, there were 
 committed to the city prison, from the lower 
 office alone, 9,530 persons ; and the clerk 
 told me, the other day, that last year there 
 were about 14,000. 
 
 A large proportion of these commitments 
 are vagrants — a term that includes drunk- 
 ards and harlots, who are seized and com- 
 mitted without much ceremony. 
 
 Look at the comparative crime of the city 
 for the five years ending in 1844, taking on- 
 ly the convictions in the oyer and terminer, 
 the general, and the special sessions: 1840, 
 1,099; 1841,1,355; 1842,1,385; 1843, 
 1,675 ; 1844, 1447. 
 
STATISTICS OF VICE. 
 
 163 
 
 You see a regular increase until the last, 
 when there is a falling off ; but in this time 
 the population has been increasing rapidly. 
 The comparison is therefore gratifying and 
 encouraging, for we have no reason to be- 
 lieve that the administration of justice has 
 been less efficient the last year than before. 
 
 " Licentiousness." — Aldermen Til- 
 lou and Woodhull presented to the board 
 of aldermen, in 1844, a report in relation to 
 the police of the city, in which they bring 
 to view the details of vice that ought to be 
 known to the public, but which, being buried 
 in " jniblic documents," are never read. 
 
 When it was proved to the world, by fig- 
 ures that do not lie, that one out of every 
 seven certainly, and perhaps one out of ev- 
 ery five persons in the city, receives aid at 
 the hand of charity every year, the fact was 
 denounced as a libel on the city, and I was 
 waited on by several gentlemen with a re- 
 quest to re-examine the subject. I did, and 
 made the matter worse. I shall, therefore, 
 not say, that one out of every seven females 
 
364 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 in the city over the age of sixteen and under 
 thirty-six is an abandoned woman ; for, 
 should I say so, nobody would believe it, 
 and I should be read out of society. But 
 T will give you the facts in the case, and 
 you must draw the inferences. The com- 
 mittee of the board of aldermen estimate, 
 from actual examination of certain parts of 
 the city, that there are ten thousand of these 
 bad women residing among us. The ave- 
 rage life of those thus given up to vice is 
 not more than ten or fifteen years. In a 
 population of 350,000 persons, there are 
 about 70,000 females over the age of six- 
 teen and under thirty-six, and within these 
 ages may be reckoned nearly all those of 
 w T hom we are speaking. Now take the 
 number 70,000, divide it by 10,000, and 
 you shall find the proportion of the vicious 
 to the virtuous to be one in seven!!! It 
 does seem to me that the aldermen must 
 be mistaken. But I am serving them as 
 others serve me, when I thus call in ques- 
 tion the results of their examination, and I 
 
STATISTICS OF VICE. 
 
 165 
 
 will let it stand for others to correct, if they 
 can. 
 
 This vast multitude of the abandoned 
 find support, not in the population of our 
 city alone, but by preying on the passions 
 of the tens of thousands of strangers who 
 are always with us, and who here seek those 
 criminal indulgences which they can not find 
 at home. Here, too, the victims of vice in 
 the country flee for a shelter from the scorn 
 of the world, and now seek to live upon that 
 which has been their ruin. It has been 
 shown by actual inquiry, that these sinks 
 of iniquity are supplied by importations 
 from the country, where the air of heaven 
 is pure, but where sin reigns as here. 
 
 You will like to know how this state of 
 things compares with other cities. I have 
 statistics of some places in Great Britain, and 
 we do not care to compare ourselves with 
 continental Europe. Their pre-eminency 
 in vice is not to be called in question. But 
 look at England. Supposing that there are 
 400 brothels in the city of New York, our 
 
166 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 place in the scale will be learned from the 
 following table, which I have prepared, ta- 
 king the population of New York from the 
 last census : — 
 
 Population. Brothels. 
 
 New York 313,000, 400, 
 
 Liverpool 223,000, .770, 
 
 Manchester 380,000, 308, 
 
 Birmingham 197,000, 797, 
 
 London 1,900,000, 5,000. 
 
 I have returns from other cities, but these 
 are enough. You will readily perceive that 
 there is no great difference between us and 
 our trans-Atlantic sisters, on the score of 
 morals. Our report is better than some, 
 and worse than others. But I believe we 
 are better in one particular. I never heard 
 that any bishop in our country, or clergy- 
 man of any name, derived any part of his 
 living from the rent of brothels. But it is 
 a well-known fact, having been exposed in 
 the house of lords, that the rent of a large 
 number of brothels flows into the coffers of 
 one of the bishops; and not long since was 
 &een the Rev. J. Holmes figuring at the 
 
STATISTICS OF VICE. 
 
 167 
 
 Marylebone police-office, as the landlord of 
 a furnished brothel, and preferring a charge 
 arrainst his tenant for baring stolen three 
 looking-glasses ! These are not solitary 
 cases. Not long since, another clergyman 
 of the church of England being reproached 
 with the ownership of six of these houses, 
 replied : " Why blame me ; my masters 
 have hundreds." Whether legal restraints 
 can be imposed, so as materially to check 
 the evil, seems to be a question which le- 
 gislators usually answer in the negative. But 
 that our laws are radically defective on the 
 whole subject I have not a doubt, and I 
 wish that the minds of those who make and 
 administer our laws might be put right. 
 
 It is said that if severe enactments are 
 made against the sale of ardent spirits and 
 also against violations of the seventh com- 
 mandment, it will be impossible to enforce 
 them ; that the appetites and passions of 
 men will be gratified, in spite of law, and 
 public opinion will never sustain the magis- 
 trate in ths execution of a law that inflicts a 
 
169 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 heavy penalty upon offences which are com- 
 mitted by the free will of both parties con- 
 cerned. Thus the man who buys and the 
 man who sells ardent spirits, consent to the 
 transaction, and why should the seller be 
 punished? So of the seducer. But this 
 reasoning goes upon two false positions: 1, 
 that these are the only parties ; and, 2, 
 that the consent of the victim absolves from 
 guilt. Society has an interest in this mat- 
 ter ; and the good of the whole number 
 should be looked at in law-making. Nor 
 is it true that a member of society has a 
 right to injure himself to the injury of his 
 neighbors : as he does when he becomes a 
 drunkard and a seducer. There are others 
 who suffer besides the victim of the rum- 
 seller and the seducer; and these others have 
 rights which the law should protect. And 
 if a house is kept open in this city for the 
 sale of ardent spirits to be drunk as a bev- 
 erage, if a house is kept open in which the 
 temptations to licentiousness are exposed 
 for sale, why, in the name of everlasting 
 
STATISTICS OF VICE. 
 
 169 
 
 ri<rht, does not the law make such houses 
 
 o 7 
 
 nuisances, to be exterminated from the heart 
 of society. It licenses the one class and 
 lets the other alone ! If a miserable hole 
 in Orange street, becomes so offensive that 
 
 D 7 
 
 the peace of the city requires its purgation, 
 the old hag who keeps it will be snaked to 
 the police-office, and tried for " keeping a 
 disorderly house." But hundreds of houses 
 close by the houses of our magistrates spread 
 their allurements before the eyes of our 
 youth, and tempt them into the vortex of 
 hell, and the shield of law protects the 
 portal, though all that enter, enter to be 
 damned. 
 
 It is said that if these vices are made 
 penal, they will still be practised. So there 
 will be thieves and murderers, in spite of 
 law. But surely no sane man will be for 
 having no laws against theft and murder. 
 We ought to have laws built, as God's laws 
 are, on the right and the wrong of things, 
 with penalties proportioned to the nature 
 and consequences of crime ; instead of laws 
 15 
 
170 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 that are based confessedly on the prejudices 
 and ignorance and depravity of those who 
 hate all laws because they interfere with their 
 lusts. 
 
 A great many people seem to think that 
 the devil has the majority on his side, and 
 therefore there is no use in trying to vote 
 him and his down. But God's side is the 
 strongest, and even in this country where 
 governing is done by voting, if the friends 
 of God and virtue were half as wise ir their 
 generation as the devil's people in theirs, 
 the right would prevail. There are hun- 
 dreds and thousands of people in this city 
 who expect to go to heaven, who never give 
 themselves any trouble about the vices of 
 the times, leaving laws and politics, and 
 consequently the morals of the people, to 
 take care of themselves ; when they hear 
 of a horrid crime in the streets or in a den 
 of shame, they groan heavily, but as to 
 moving in a work of reform, to secure bet- 
 ter law-makers and better laws, or even to 
 secure the triumph of a moral reformation, so 
 
STATISTICS OF VICE. 
 
 171 
 
 as to make public sentiment what it might be, 
 they never dream of such a thing, not they! 
 The friends of virtue should awake to the 
 moral dangers that lurk and riot and reign 
 in this city ; they should strive together to 
 reclaim the vicious, to restrain the erring, 
 to strengthen the weak, to dam up the cur- 
 rents of evil, exterminate the seeds of vice, 
 expel or imprison the wretches who make 
 their bread by tempting to perdition our 
 sons and daughters, and gloat, like harpies, 
 over the blasted hopes and crushed hearts of 
 their victims. There are thousands of houses 
 in this city, over whose door might be writ- 
 ten, as it is written over one of the doors of 
 the theatres — "to the pit." Edmund 
 Burke said, in reference to the vices of 
 London, that were it not for the lofty spires 
 of their churches, which serve to conduct 
 away the lightning of heaven, God's fire 
 would long ago have consumed the city ; 
 and who that knows the abominations of 
 ours, but trembles when he thinks that the 
 Holy One is Almighty! 
 
172 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A NOCTURNAL SUBTERRANEAN EXCURSION. 
 
 All of the city is not above ground. 
 There are multitudes who live and move 
 and have their being in depths that sunlight 
 seldom permeates, and where the footstep 
 of virtue as seldom breaks upon the cease- 
 less career ofdark and loathsome sin. When 
 Dickens visited this country he made an ex- 
 ploring tour through one of these haunts of 
 infamy and vice; and in the strong colours 
 with which he paints, he has given us a 
 horrid picture of what he saw. But he is 
 altogether better at fancy than fact, and 
 when we read his descriptions of things real, 
 we are all the while inclined to believe that 
 he is romancing; and his truthful portraits 
 are passed by as amusing caricatures. Yet 
 ever since we read his narrative of an "un- 
 
A NOCTURNAL SUBTERRANEAN EXCURSION. 173 
 
 derground ball," in a place that now bears 
 his name, an appropriate memorial of his 
 sojourn among us, being called "Dickens' 
 Hole," there has been much curiosity awa- 
 kened to know how much truth there was 
 in his story, though there was nothing very 
 inviting in the prospect of following in his 
 footsteps through the lowest and darkest 
 dens of pollution on the continent of x^meri- 
 ca ! Of course you would never expect 
 me to make a personal investigation of such 
 localities, but a few nights ago a friend of 
 mine, accompanied by a friend of his, and 
 under the escort of a well-known police- 
 officer, a terror to the sons and daughters 
 of crime, and a frequent visiter in their do- 
 mains, made the tour of the regions to which 
 I have referred, and I propose to give you, 
 very briefly, an account of some things they 
 saw. One of the parties related to me the 
 incidents of the night which I will transfer 
 to this canvass in my own way. 
 
 It was midnight. We had made an ap- 
 pointment with an officer of the city police, 
 15* 
 
174 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 one of the oldest and truest of that depart- 
 ment, to meet us at the house, and 
 
 we were all ready. The neighbourhood 
 we proposed to visit, was unsafe for any 
 man to enter in the night unless well pro- 
 tected, and we had therefore taken such 
 precautions as the first law of nature dic- 
 tates in such cases. Turning down L 
 
 to O street, we came to a large white- 
 washed door, at which the officer tapped, 
 as if giving a signal to be understood with- 
 in. The door was cautiously opened, and 
 we stood enveloped in darkness, but the 
 sound of distant music broke upon our 
 ears. We groped our way to a flight of 
 stairs down which we marched, the officer 
 being at the head ; till we came to another 
 door guarded by a porter, who proved to 
 be the presiding genius of the establish- 
 ment. He knew the officer at a glance, 
 and was as complaisant as if a new customer 
 had come; and on being informed that we 
 were on a pleasure excursion through his 
 dominions, he threw open his infernal ball- 
 
A NOCTURNAL SUBTERRANEAN EXCURSION. 175 
 
 room door, and there, as sure as life, was a 
 sight such as the disordered brain of a mad- 
 man might conjure, but which we had never 
 . ( nuired to believe was one of many nightly 
 similar scenes in this Christian city. A 
 motley multitude of men and women, yel- 
 low and white, black and dingy, old and 
 
 young, ugly and no not handsome; 
 
 God forbid that beauty should ever bloom 
 ;n such a hotbed as this — but there they 
 were, a set of male and female Bacchanals 
 dancing to the tambourine and fiddle ; gig- 
 gling and laughing in a style peculiar to the 
 remote descendants of Ham, and making 
 " night hideous" with their lascivious orgies. 
 Talk of the degradation of the heathen ; of 
 savage pow-wows, and pagan carnivals; and 
 stir up sympathy for the slaves of sin in the 
 depths of Africa or Asia. Here we were 
 within a stone's throw of the city-hall, in the 
 centre of the first city in the most Chris- 
 tian country on the earth, and here was a 
 sight to make the heart sicken and bleed. 
 On one side of the room was a bar, tended 
 
176 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 by a rascally-looking wretch who dealt out 
 the liquors to the frequent calls of his cus- 
 tomers, and as the drinking- and fiddling 
 went on, the fury of the company waxed 
 fiercer, until the scene was as unreal and 
 bewildering as if we had been suddenly 
 ushered into the revelling halls of the prince 
 of darkness. 
 
 Wandering through this horrid group 
 was a young man whom we recognised as 
 of a respectable family, but his bloated face 
 and bloody eyes, and the loose familiarity 
 with which he addressed the company, 
 showed that he was at home among them, 
 and was already near the nadir point of his 
 downward career. We thought of the moth- 
 er that gave him birth, and whose hears 
 would be wrung with agony at the ruin of 
 her son, were she not one of the many 
 mothers in the ranks of fashion and pride, 
 perhaps this moment flaunting at a more 
 splendid ball, yielding to the voluptuous 
 blandishments of elegant vice, and listening 
 to the flattering tongue that will lure ber to 
 
A NOCTURNAL SUBTERRANEAN EXCURSION. 177 
 
 meet her lost boy at the door of a lower 
 hell. 
 
 " That gaudy girl," said the officer, 
 " decked with so much finery, makes it 
 her profession to decoy men into houses 
 kept for the purpose, and there she robs 
 them. Many men from the country, prompt- 
 ed by curiosity, follow such persons as you 
 see her to be, and before they are aware of 
 their danger, they are in a snare from which 
 escape is impossible. Resistance is use- 
 less, and to complain to the police is at- 
 tended with an exposure worse than the loss 
 of money. In fact, the robbery of their 
 victims is the chief pursuit of the class of 
 women of whom that girl is one of the 
 queens." 
 
 But we were glad to emerge from this 
 den, and breathe again the pure air of heav- 
 en. A bright full moon poured oo us a 
 flood of light as we gained the upper regions, 
 and what a contrast to the murky atmosphere 
 from which we had just escaped ! It was 
 a beautiful night i The mild moon sailed 
 
178 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITT. 
 
 in glory over us, and the stars " whose pit- 
 rity and distance make them fair," 
 danced like celestial virgins " in the blue 
 ethereal sky," and we could scarcely be- 
 lieve that, under such a canopy, there could 
 be such scenes as we had just left. Alas 
 for sinners I They do love darkness rather 
 than light, because their deeds are evil. 
 And this is their condemnation — they love 
 it, and have it, now and eternally. 
 
 As we stood on the pavement, arrested 
 by the loveliness of the upper world, a night 
 officer passed us, dragging a woman to the 
 watch-house; another woman followed, de- 
 claring she would go with her, and a man 
 was holding the second to pull her back. 
 Here was a scene. Sudden and fearful, but 
 it had its moral. There was devotion in the 
 woman who would follow her friend to the 
 prison ; and she did follow her, in spite of 
 the force and entreaties of her husband. In 
 this extremity of vice there was such friend- 
 ship as we rarely meet, and we thought it 
 proved that all was not lost in the miserable 
 
A NOCTURNAL SUBTERRANEAN EXCURSION. 179 
 
 woman ; perhaps there was a chord in her 
 heart that might yet be touched, and by 
 which she might be led back to virtue. O ! 
 for more of the spirit of the friend of pub- 
 licans and sinners ! O ! for men with the 
 love for the lost that burned in the bosom 
 of Jesus, to go down into these realms of 
 undisturbed depravity, and with the gentle 
 power of the gospel undertake the recovery 
 of some, at least, of these for whose souls no 
 man cares. 
 
 Our guide next led us through a dark 
 defile, into a back yard, and up a rickety 
 stairway into a shed, the door of which was 
 not opened, until athunderingblow informed 
 the inmates that it would be off the hinges 
 in a moment. The floor was covered with 
 forms that were meant for the human race, 
 but sadly changed from the forms that God 
 had given them. The fragrance was pecu- 
 liar and excessive, and we made our obser- 
 vations few and short, hastening to another 
 and another apartment of the same building, 
 the floors of the various rooms being as 
 
180 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 thickly covered with bodies as a field of 
 battle could be with the slain ; and close 
 by was another house in which from five to 
 six hundred persons sleep every night, ly- 
 ing on the floor, with a bit of old carpet or 
 nothing at all over them, but the rags they 
 carry through the day. These houses ac- 
 commodate lodgers for six cents and some 
 for three cents, in advance, a night ; their 
 customers being beggars and thieves, who 
 manage to pick up enough in the course of 
 the day and the first part of the night to 
 pay for shelter for the rest. 
 
 We stopped at the window of a rumshop 
 and looked in at a gang of gallowsbirds, who 
 were carousing. The officer knew them, 
 and mentioned their names, as they had all 
 been in his clutches before, and doubtless 
 would be again. One was a noted villain 
 of the Chichester gang, and several of them 
 illustrious in the calendar of the Tombs, as 
 burglars and rioters. It is unsafe for any 
 man to go through this part of the city in 
 the night ; for, in spite of the diligence of 
 
A NOCTURNAL SUBTERRANEAN EXCURSION. 181 
 
 watchmen, it sometimes happens that men 
 are knocked down and robbed in the streets. 
 We were well protected. Our guide was 
 well known, and it was amusing to observe 
 the deference with which he was treated ; 
 the black wretches asking after his health, 
 and that of his family, as if he were a par- 
 ticular friend, and not a man whom they 
 would be glad to put out of the way, so ef- 
 fectually as not to be troubled with his soci- 
 ety again. 
 
 But these details are growing tedious, and 
 I will bring them to a close. Perhaps I 
 have made a mistake in dwelling on these 
 features of life in the city. But these are 
 sketches drawn from the life, and the half 
 has not been told. My motive is a good 
 one. I wish to impress those who read, 
 with the power of the truth, that there is be- 
 neath this city a mass of moral putrefaction, 
 sufficient to bring out the worst plagues in 
 the store of an offended God. There are 
 depths of depravity into which quicklime 
 16 
 
182 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 should be thrown as a disinfecting agency, 
 if there can not be poured in any streams 
 to purify and heal. This picture ought to 
 compel support, and greatly augmented sup- 
 port, for city missions, and every othei 
 instrumentality that will carry the gospel to 
 those who will never come after it. We 
 must not leave these dens of unclean beasts 
 without an effort to save some of their mis- 
 erable inmates. Let us do all we can to 
 save others from getting into them. Preach 
 the gospel in the pulpit, and in the high- 
 ways, and block up the road to perdition, 
 if you can ; but if there is an arm of 
 mercy to reach these guilty wretches, whirl- 
 ing in the very throat of the maelstrom, 
 oh, for Christ's sake, let it be stretched to 
 save. 
 
 Ministers of God! preach Christ in your 
 country churches, and mingle your songs 
 of praise with the winds that sigh among the 
 tree-tops of your temples not made with 
 hands. God bless you in your joyful work, 
 
A NOCTURNAL SUBTERRANEAN EXCURSION. 183 
 
 as those ready to perish will. But think of 
 the sinners of this city, murdering their 
 souls under the shadow of sanctuaries, and 
 diving headlong into hell from the gates of 
 heaven. 
 
184 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITT. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 MILK IN THE METROPOLIS. 
 
 Some weeks ago, a friend invited me to 
 make an excursion into the upper part of 
 the city to see a milk-factory. I had read 
 Hartley's articles about city milk, and had 
 heard of chalk and water and other nos- 
 trums, not forgetting the receipt for which 
 a patent ought to be taken out : — 
 
 To make milk. 
 
 Take aq. font 87 parts. 
 
 " lac. bov 10 " 
 
 " cal. mag 3 " 
 
 Total 100 " 
 
 This mixture makes a very fair article, at 
 least it has no injurious ingredients, if the 
 articles are obtained pure ; and since the 
 
MILK IN THE METROPOLIS. 185 
 
 Croton aqueduct is completed, the chief in- 
 gredient is easily procured. But my friend 
 assured me, that he could introduce me 
 more deeply into the mysteries of the trade, 
 and with this view I accompanied him. He 
 took me by stage to a " still," or more ele- 
 gantly, to a " distillery," in the midst of a 
 densely-built and populated part of the city, 
 where whiskey is manufactured in horrid 
 quantities, yet it w T ould seem as if this were 
 but a secondary branch of the business here 
 carried on. Two thousand cows are 
 confined in stalls, which are arranged in 
 parallel rows, and in front of each row of 
 cows is a trough, into which the refuse grain 
 from the distillery, called the " still-slops," 
 a villanous fluid, flows directly from the 
 still. It pours in a torrent from the princi- 
 pal reservoir, runs into one trough till it is 
 full, then on into another, and another, till 
 all are filled ; and this is the aliment on 
 which these animals feed, to generate the 
 milk that feeds the babes and the babes r 
 mothers in this good city. These cows are 
 
186 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY 
 
 not taken out to be milked, out there, in 
 those horridly filthy stalls, from which a 
 stench went forth compared with which the 
 valley of Tophet must have been a garden 
 of aroma, there, day and night, they stand 
 and drink this poison for their sustenance ; 
 and into this noisome place the milk-cans 
 are carried, and, as the cows are milked, 
 the milk is poured in, and the cans are car- 
 ried to the door, and placed in the carts 
 that stand ready, and away they are driven 
 directly to the door of the customers ! 
 
 But the beauty of the system is yet to be 
 told. These poison-milk traffickers know 
 very well that, if the customers suspected 
 that the milk was distilled in such filthiness, 
 they would refuse to buy it. And what lit- 
 tle trick, my unsuspecting friend, do you 
 suppose they resort to, to lull all suspicion 
 on this point ? I'll tell you, and you will 
 never doubt the superior cunning of our city- 
 dealers over your country dulness : they 
 inscribe on their carts some rural title to 
 their establishment, as " The Green Briar 
 
MILK IN THE METROPOLIS. 
 
 187 
 
 Dairy," " Myrtle Cottage Milk," or some- 
 thing of this sort, and as a good lady sits at 
 her window, and sees this inscription on a 
 neat wagon, with milk cans in it, flying by, 
 she bids Biddy telegraph it when it passes 
 to-morrow, and tell the honest farmer to call 
 there every day ! 
 
 You must know that we have no great 
 knowledge here in the city of the properties 
 of milk, and therefore we are not able to 
 detect impositions of this sort by inspection 
 of the article itself. Sometime ago a milk- 
 man, who drove in daily from a few miles 
 out of the city, was seized with sudden 
 qualms of conscience as to the honesty of 
 levying contributions upon the pump for the 
 purpose of increasing the quantity of his 
 supply, and he therefore resolved, strange, 
 incredible as it may appear, he resolved to 
 carry pure milk to market for once in his 
 life. Strong in the faith of this good re- 
 solve, he increased the number of his cows, 
 and thus produced an adequate supply for 
 his customers. He had not continued the 
 
188 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITT. 
 
 distribution of this rare and excellent article 
 more than a few days, before one of his best 
 
 customers, a lady in street, discharged 
 
 him. When the servant communicated to 
 him her ladyship's order, he begged to be 
 told the reason, and the lady, on being sum- 
 moned, very frankly informed him, they had 
 observed for a few days past that, when his 
 milk had stood a while, " a dirty yellow 
 scum gathered all over the top of it, and 
 they wouldn't have such stuff in the 
 house! ! !" Here was a pretty disclosure. 
 This city housekeeper had never seen such 
 an article as cream in her life, and she fan- 
 cied it to be a filthy excrement, revealing 
 some pernicious ingredient added by the 
 milkman. The dealer was nonplused. 
 Should he resort to the pump, or lose his 
 customers ? I never heard the result of 
 his deliberations on this point. But let us 
 return to that milk-factory up town. 
 
 The cows are not owned by the distillers. 
 They are boarders only. A man manages 
 to get a little money, sufficient to buy a few 
 
MILK IN THE METROPOLIS. 
 
 189 
 
 cows, and takes them to this still, where 
 they are stalled and fed for something like 
 two dollars a month : the rent of these stalls 
 and the sale of the feed thus bringing in a 
 most enormous sum to the distillery over 
 and above the profit of the other business, 
 the awful wickedness of which I will not 
 here undertake to portray. 
 
 The injurious effects of this milk has 
 been most abundantly shown in years past, 
 and I supposed that our citizens had given 
 up the use of it altogether. But since my 
 visit to this establishment, I have learned 
 that there are in the city and all around it, 
 in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn, and other 
 places, similar establishments, in full blast, 
 so that there is probably more of this poi- 
 sonous fluid sold for milk in the city of New 
 York this moment, than there ever was be- 
 fore. And this too, notwithstanding the 
 fact that any family here, that wants it, may 
 have milk for tea to-night that was taken 
 from the cows in the heart of Orange county, 
 less than sixteen hours before. Yet there 
 
190 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 is no accounting for tastes. And the fact 
 is, if men, heads of families, had it certified 
 to them on the best authority that still-slop 
 milk is a slow but certain poison, they would 
 not care enough about it, to make an effort 
 to secure better, and so they continue to 
 feed their children on that which is known 
 to be decidedly and inevitably injurious. 
 
FASHIONABLE CLUB-HOUSES. 191 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 FASHIONABLE CLUB-HOUSES. 
 
 You have often read of the club-houses 
 of London, sustained by associations of the 
 most rigid exclusiveness, into which no 
 man can gain admission without the highest 
 qualifications. What these qualifications 
 are it would be curious to know. One of 
 the first is plenty of money ; the next is a 
 fondness for spending it ; and then follows 
 a fondness for those ways and means of 
 spending it which are known to free-livers, 
 and of which such old-fashioned people as 
 you and I know very little. We should be 
 as much out of our element in one of these 
 clubs as a fish out of water, and if we should 
 attempt to speak of the manner in which 
 the members exhaust their time and their 
 
192 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 purses, we might only discover our own 
 verdancy. 
 
 But I had never seen one of these club- 
 houses, at least a genuine pattern, here in 
 New York, until last winter. Frequently 
 in passing the splendid front of a growing 
 edifice, I had wondered for what purpose 
 it could be intended, and made repeated in- 
 quiries with no satisfactory result. The fact 
 that a vast pile was going up in the heart of 
 the city, of which the object was not gen- 
 erally known, only served to excite my cu- 
 riosity, till I was tempted to drop in under 
 a sign of " No Admittance." I soon learned 
 that this splendid building is put up at the 
 expense of a club who pay a handsome 
 initiation fee, and the capital thus formed 
 is invested in the edifice and furniture. 
 The front presents nothing to the eye to 
 distinguish it from a private edifice of beau- 
 tiful proportions and elaborate finish, but 
 the interior arrangements and a lateral view 
 will discover that it is designed for the most 
 extensive accommodations of the multitu- 
 
FASHIONABLE CLUB-HOUSES. 193 
 
 dinousbody that have erected the house. It 
 reaches through from street to street, and 
 two thirds of the building seems to be de- 
 voted to alleys and chambers for wicket, 
 nine-pins, and such games of ball, &c, as 
 require at once great space and protection. 
 
 Penetrating these apartments still further, 
 you are admitted into private chambers 
 where the lovers of play may amuse them- 
 selves in more secluded circles, and pursue 
 such methods of destroying time and making 
 or losing money as to them may be more 
 agreeable than mingling in the athletic sports 
 and less-refined contests of the alley or the 
 billiard-room. The penetralia will not be 
 discovered until you make a subterranean 
 excursion, and explore the winding recesses 
 of the labyrinth of rooms upon which you 
 have entered. Without a thread or a guide 
 it would be difficult to find your w T ay out, 
 and the safest way to escape from such places 
 is to keep away from them altogether. 
 
 This establishments splendidly furnish- 
 ed, no elegance of embellishment, no luxury 
 17 
 
194 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 of furniture, no attraction of comfort or dis- 
 play, being spared to render it the ad miration 
 of the voluptuous and the envy of all those 
 who have not the means to make a success- 
 ful push for admission into the club. 
 
 The idea seems to have got abroad that 
 this new club-house is designed specially 
 for those who can not comfortably slay at 
 home. It embraces a large number of high- 
 ly respectable men, from some of the first 
 families of the city, and so many of them 
 are married men that it is called in the 
 street, the " asylum for distressed 
 
 HUSBANDS." 
 
 Now I think it is wrong to give the club 
 such a name as this. It intimates that the 
 married gentlemen who belong to it are so 
 situated in their domestic relations that they 
 are under the disagreeable necessity of fly- 
 ing to a clubthouse for a little comfort. If 
 this imputation is false, it is very unkind to 
 circulate the slander; and if it is true, it is 
 bad enough to suffer at home, without being 
 twitted of it abroad. I am therefore, from 
 
FASHIONABLE CLUB-HOUSES. 195 
 
 principle, opposed to the application of this 
 sympathetic title to the house, and I trust 
 that all well-disposed persons will avoid it 
 in future. The object of " most of the 
 club" is " to provide a place where they 
 and their friends can have the benefit of 
 taking athletic exercise, and enjoying ju- 
 dicious recreation and relaxation of both 
 body and mind, without being compelled to 
 mix with uncongenial associates." 
 
 Such being the avowed object, it would 
 be supposed that an establishment for "ta- 
 king exercise" could be conducted under 
 such regulations as should exclude gam- 
 bling. But not so with this club. The 
 principle on which this is founded is to put 
 "restrictions upon gambling," and by one 
 of the by-laws of the club "no bet shall be 
 made upon any game, in any part of the 
 establishment, exceeding five dollars. The 
 stake at short whist to be not more than half 
 this amount." — " Any member discovered 
 to have infringed this by-law, shall forfeit 
 his right of membership without appeal." 
 
196 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 It is very easy to see that this is no better, 
 if not worse, than no rule at all. To say 
 nothing of the case with which it may be 
 evaded by a party who choose to play with- 
 out the actual stakes being known to any 
 but themselves, if it were faithfully adhered 
 to by the members it merely reduces this 
 house into a primary school, where youth 
 may acquire both taste and skill in gambling, 
 which taste and skill may be gratified and 
 exercised in other places with which this 
 city abounds. There is not a passion with 
 which the human heart is fired, that is more 
 resistless and destroying than this of gam- 
 bling. I have no sermon to preach about it : 
 but I confess a feeling of distress, amounting 
 almost to anguish at the thought that here 
 is a splendid court with every conceivable 
 source of seductive allurement for young 
 men, who are assured before they enter that 
 by the laws of the establishment they can 
 not play for more than Jive dollars upon any 
 one game ! Perhaps if they knew that they 
 might lose more, even all they have, they 
 
FASHIONABLE CLUB-HOUSES. 197 
 
 might be deterred from venturing: but the 
 insurance is, " You can't lose but five dollars, 
 come in," and then the habit is formed, the 
 passion is roused, and the result has been 
 written in lines of agony and read with tears 
 of blood. A more fearful chapter than the 
 records of the gaming-table, the history of 
 sinful man does not furnish. 
 
 But I am running away from my subject. 
 If you want other illustrations let the celib- 
 acy of the Romish priesthood and the Mo- 
 nastic system, spread their " interior life" 
 to your view, and if all history is not a long 
 lie, and all reasoning from facts fallacious, 
 then of a truth is the divine plan for every 
 man to have his own wife, as important as 
 it is pleasant. Worse than the club-house 
 system of living, as more corrupt and cor- 
 rupting, is the socialistic plan, which the 
 modern Fourierites of our city are seeking 
 to render popular. It is a pestilent and li- 
 centious system, undermining the whole 
 structure of society, and offering as an anti- 
 dote to some acknowledged evils a scheme 
 
198 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 that begets a legion of devils for every one 
 it pretends to eject. It is amazing to me 
 that some of onr pious people, even Chris- 
 tian ministers, will permit the doctrines of 
 this school to be insidiously but constantly 
 introduced into their houses in their secular 
 newspapers. A society was got up here in 
 New York a few months ago, to make war 
 upon tlie " light reading" or the " licentious 
 literature" of the day, and they will drive 
 fiercely, and I hope successfully, against 
 Eugene Sue and Bulwer, and such panders 
 to lust as these authors of fiction are, while 
 the hydra-headed monster of socialism is 
 left to work silently and fatally, sucking the 
 heart-blood from the sons and daughters of 
 Christians in the city and the land over. 
 
 Leaving the new club-house to which I 
 have called your attention, I could pointout 
 to you other establishments, on a smaller 
 scale which have long been in operation in 
 our city, for the same general purpose. It 
 has been supposed that the cities of Europe 
 had a bad pre-eminence over ours in the 
 
FASHIONABLE CLUB-HOUSES. 199 
 
 facilities they furnish for elegant vice. But 
 I have my doubts whether there is one spe- 
 cies of iniquity which wicked men lust after, 
 which may not be as readily found in New 
 York as in London. The only good that 
 can result from such remarks as these, must 
 lie in their power to stir the hearts of the 
 friends of virtue to more thorough and un- 
 tiring efforts to dry up the fountains of vice, 
 and save the young from the paths that lead 
 to death. The gates of hell in New York 
 are gilded : flowers are in the path and mu- 
 sic with its voluptuous swell, floats on the 
 ears of the throng that dance down the 
 broad road. 
 
 The club, I understand, is composed 
 chiefly of foreigners, though I doubt not 
 that many of our own youth to whom wealth 
 has been left by their hard-working parents, 
 and who have no habits of honest industry 
 themselves, will be found enrolled among 
 its members. Probably the same rules of 
 admission here prevail that govern the Lon- 
 don and Paris clubs, and each new candi- 
 
200 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITT. 
 
 date is voted for or against by those already 
 initiated ; white and black balls being used 
 for ballots, and if one black ball is deposited 
 when a candidate for membership is pro- 
 posed, he is not admitted. This makes it 
 extremely difficult to gain a standing in these 
 recherche communities, the obstacles being 
 in direct proportion to the undesirableness 
 of the connexion. 
 
 Here young men of "fashion," or men 
 at large may find their " board and lodging" 
 at an enormous price it is true, but in that 
 free and easy way that is so vastly agreeable 
 to men who have no wish to be hampered 
 in their business or pleasures with families 
 or regular hours, and so long as the means 
 hold out, the highest style of independent 
 living is to be had in such an establishment. 
 I have said nothing to charge this or similar 
 concerns with profligate vice ; but how 
 such vice is to be separated from such an 
 institution, it is impossible to understand. 
 The restraints of home, of society, of the 
 private circle ; restraints that are silken 
 
FASHIONABLE CLUB-HOUSES. 
 
 201 
 
 cords around the heart, are galling to the 
 necks of those who join a club, and find 
 their pleasure in companionship around the 
 gaming-table or in the alley. The charm 
 that woman sheds in the circle of the intel- 
 ligent and pure, a charm in which we love 
 to confess that we have long been bound, 
 has no power on the hearts of those who 
 must fly to the club-house, in the sports of 
 their own sex to seek the only amusement 
 for which they have any taste. And I need 
 not say that to such men, woman is no more 
 than she is to a pagan or a Turk. Instead 
 of being his sister to be blessed with his 
 affection, or his wife to bless him with her 
 love, instead of being the angel of his life 
 to minister to his moral, intellectual, and so- 
 cial desires, that should expand themselves 
 in that which is noble and pure, woman is 
 to him but the slave of his passions and the 
 victim of his lusts. 
 
 I make no such charge as this (far from 
 it) against all men who have not " these 
 bonds" of wedded life. But I number not 
 
202 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 on my list of friends the man who shuts 
 himself out of the society of virtuous 
 women, and either as a hermit or a " man 
 of the town" can find his pleasure in a 
 world that has no woman for its sun or star. 
 I am even afraid of literary men who yield 
 to the seductions of books so far as to re- 
 fuse companionship with the other sex, and 
 in the retirement of their closets spend their 
 days if not their nights. Since the days of 
 Father Adam down to the present it never 
 was good for man to be alone. And that 
 solitude in Adam's case must be broken 
 too, not by putting another man into the 
 garden to help him in his pruning and plant- 
 ing, but by the company of woman, taken, 
 as somebody has said, not from his head to 
 overtop him, nor from his feet to be trampled 
 on, but from under his arm to be protected, 
 and from near his heart to be loved ! That's 
 my doctrine ; and therefore I dislike the 
 practice which some good men pursue, of 
 cutting themselves off from the usual and 
 important socialities of refined and virtuous 
 life. 
 
THE POOR IN NEW YORK. 
 
 203 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE POOR IN NEW YORK. 
 
 In former chapters I have made allusions 
 to the poor of the city, but have given no 
 statement of any systematic plans for their 
 relief. When I first came from the country, 
 into this great metropolis, nothing made me 
 so unhappy as the sight of misery, to which 
 [ could not shut my eyes. And when I 
 would see a little ragged child crying in the 
 street, his sorrow seemed so hopeless and 
 helpless, that it would hang like a cloud 
 around my heart for half an hour ! Not a 
 great while, you say, for a man to feel for 
 other's woes ; but if we should give more 
 than half an hour to each case of misery we 
 meet in the city, we should have a sorry 
 time of it. Sometimes I have sought to 
 offer comfort by inquiring into the cause of 
 grief, but have seldom been successful in 
 
204 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 reaching the source to dry it up. Once I 
 recollect of meeting a little girl, some half 
 dozen years of age, dirty and ragged, crying 
 as if her heart would break, and patting her 
 on the head, I said kindly to her : — 
 
 " What's the matter, little girl ?" 
 
 11 Mamma's been a lickirC on me," said 
 the child, and very likely she deserved it. 
 
 Perhaps there is no city of the same ex- 
 tent in the world where there is less suffer- 
 ing from poverty than in the city of New 
 York. 
 
 A friend has recently placed in my hands 
 the results of his investigation into the origin, 
 progress, and efficiency of thirty-two soci- 
 eties, the object of which is the relief of the 
 poor and the needy, the sick and afflicted, 
 in the city of New York. Twenty of these 
 associations, in the year 1842, extended 
 gratuitous aid to 65,955 persons ; twelve 
 associations do not report the number of 
 persons relieved ; and besides these soci- 
 eties, there are hundreds of churches, and 
 many private institutions and individuals, 
 
THE POOR IN NEW \OKK. 
 
 205 
 
 that extend important aid to multitudes not 
 embraced in the above vast aggregate. I 
 have not a doubt that if the whole truth 
 were known, it would appear that at least 
 75,000 persons receive alms every year. 
 You will not understand that this number 
 is entirely dependent upon charity. This 
 is true of comparatively few. But is there 
 not something that makes this fireside de- 
 lightful beyond expression, and the heart 
 grateful to the Giver of all good, while we 
 weep at the thought that one fourth of 
 all the people who live within the limits of 
 this single city are so near to suffering. 
 
 It is no matter of surprise to me, that so 
 many are ready to doubt the correctness of 
 this statement, as to the number of the poor 
 in this city. I did doubt it myself when I 
 first reached the sum, and hardly believed 
 the figures. You must, however, bear in 
 mind that the manner in which the register 
 is kept in many of the dispensaries, renders 
 the repetition of the same name in the 
 course of the year unavoidable. Thus, if 
 18 
 
206 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 a man goes to the city dispensary for medi- 
 cine and advice, he receives it, and his 
 name is entered on the books. He applies 
 again, the next time he is in want of aid, 
 and again his name is entered ; and in the 
 course of the year he may have been a fre- 
 quent recipient of charity. The same man 
 may also have gone to other institutions, 
 and from them received alms, and there his 
 name is also entered ; and in this manner, 
 the aggregate report of these institutions 
 show an exaggerated view of the pauperism 
 of the city. I wish that this explanation 
 were sufficient to account for the wonderful 
 statement, and to satisfy the public mind 
 that it is an error. But I have reason to 
 fear it will be found, on the closest exami- 
 nation, that a number, far exceeding the 
 calculations of the most intelligent, are liv- 
 ing in our city at the very next door to want. 
 Understand me, I do not say that these 
 people are supported by alms. Nothing 
 like it. But I mean to say that there are 
 tens of thousands in this rich, young, and 
 
THE POOR IN NEW YORK. 
 
 207 
 
 prosperous town, who are living so near to 
 poverty, that if they are sick, they go or 
 send to the hospital, almshouse, dispensary, 
 or some kindred institution, for relief; and 
 if aid were not rendered by the hand of 
 charity, they would probably suffer. 
 
 You must count the members of churches 
 relieved by the society to which they belong. 
 There are nearly two hundred churches in 
 this city, to whom the prediction of the 
 Saviour is still fulfilled : " The poor ye 
 have with you always ;" and probably few 
 of them afford aid to less than ten, and some 
 of them to far more than that number, in the 
 course of the year. 
 
 You will now add to this great number 
 the uncounted multitudes whom private 
 charity aids, not by indiscriminate almsgiv- 
 ing in the street, or at the door, but those 
 they find who, like their Master, love to go 
 about doing good ; and there are thousands 
 of benevolent men and women who make it 
 a part of their religion to visit the widow 
 and the fatherless, to seek the suffering in 
 
208 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 their shrinking retirement, and by delicate 
 inquiry to learn their wants, and pour the 
 sweet oil of tender love upon the aching 
 heart. I have seen men, who perhaps 
 would not have it known, lest it should dis- 
 cover weakness, who take a basket on their 
 arm in the morning, and pry into cellars and 
 garrets where there are signs of poverty, and 
 there have the blessed satisfaction of feed- 
 ing the hungry. How many thousands in 
 this city are relieved by these messengers 
 of mercy, I know not ; but I do know that 
 many will sneer at this statement, and say 
 there are few such angels among the men 
 or women of New York. Not so few as 
 you think for, Mr. Tightfist. Because you 
 gathered your children around you last 
 thanksgiving-day, and over a royal feast 
 thanked God for your loaded table and un- 
 told mercies, and never thought of the poor 
 within a stone's throw of your door, who 
 have no table, but rejoice to get the bones 
 that are flung from your kitchen, therefore 
 you think that everybody else is as cold- 
 
THE POOR IN NEW YORK. 209 
 
 hearted, and stingy, and merciless, as you! 
 No, Mr. Tightfist, eat your thanksgiving 
 dinner, and eat it all ; but there are many 
 in this world who never relish a thanksgiv- 
 ing dinner till thev have made half a dozen 
 families happy fur once at least. 
 
 Put all these recipients of charity togeth- 
 er, and let us look at the aggregate. I will 
 give you a table of statistics, showing the 
 number of persons relieved in this city in 
 
 one year : — 
 
 New York Dispensary 22.441 
 
 Northern Dispensary 10.235 
 
 Eastern Dispensary 17.004 
 
 Odd-Fellows 18,740 
 
 Female Assistance Society for the relief of 
 
 sick poor 5,000 
 
 German Benevolent Society 4,009 
 
 New York Hospital 2,116 
 
 City Almshouse Department 54,620 
 
 Aided hy Churches (estimate) 5,000 
 
 Relieved by private charity (estimate) 10,000 
 
 Society for poor widows and small children. . 3,449 
 
 Other Societies not enumerated (estimate).. 5,000 
 
 Total 155,614 
 
 The " other societies," which I have es- 
 IS* 
 
210 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 timated as affording aid to 5,000 persons, 
 embrace such institutions as the 11 Lunatic," 
 " Orphan." and " Deaf and Dumb" asy- 
 lums, " Fire-Department Fund," the "New 
 England," " St. Nicholas," " St. David's," 
 " St. Andrew's," " St. George's," and 
 "French Benevolent" societies, 44 Sailor's," 
 "For the Relief of Aged Colored Persons," 
 "Friendly Sons of St. Patrick," "Tem- 
 perance Benevolent Associations," and 
 many more from which I have no returns. 
 You will be ready to believe, as I do, that 
 these societies afford assistance to five times 
 five thousand, and therefore, that my esti- 
 mate is far below the truth. Now there are 
 many of the societies in the table above in 
 which there is no probability that the names 
 of beneficiaries are repeated, while there are 
 others, as in the almshouse out-door relief, 
 and the dispensaries, where it is doubtless 
 true that repetitions are numerous. Let us 
 suppose that one third of 150.000 have been 
 entered but once, we have then 50,000 * 
 suppose that the remainder have been en- 
 
THE POOR IN NEW YORK. 
 
 211 
 
 tered each four times, that is, has been re- 
 lieved by two or more societies, or four 
 times by the same, we will then take a quar- 
 ter of the 100,000, and add it to the first 
 third, and we have an aggregate of 75,000, 
 being more than one in five of the popula- 
 tion of the city of New York. If you can 
 believe that this is an over-estimate, very 
 well ; and if you, or any one else, will 
 show that there is more repetition of names 
 than I have supposed, still better. Make 
 the number as small as you can; I wish it 
 were less. 
 
 By these investigations it was made evi- 
 dent that there are many w T ho need relief to 
 whom it never comes, and that some plan 
 should be set on foot by which judicious and 
 thorough charity should be made to pervade 
 every cellar and garret, every nook and 
 corner of the city; carrying in its arms of 
 mercy the very aid required to the very spot 
 where suffering has a hiding-place. An as- 
 sociation of intelligent philanthropists was 
 accordingly formed, and after long delibera- 
 
212 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 tion and careful comparison of facts and 
 opinions, they came to the following con- 
 clusions : — 
 
 1. That of the amount which is annually 
 bestowed on applicants for relief, a large 
 proportion falls into the hands of unworthy 
 objects, and that such charity does more 
 harm than good. 
 
 2. That individuals either can not, or at 
 least do not generally make the inquiries 
 necessary for judicious action, nor adapt 
 their action to the case with that reference 
 to the principles on which alone can any 
 contributions to the use of the suffering take 
 place, without influences so injurious to the 
 individual and readily extended to others, 
 that it has led many to doubt whether refu- 
 sal without exception to unknown applicants 
 for relief is not the more humane course. 
 
 3. That there does exist in this city a 
 large amount of suffering and destitution 
 which in a Christian community ought to 
 meet with relief, if it be possible to devise 
 
THE POOH IN NEW YORK. 
 
 213 
 
 any mode which will in any considerable 
 degree avoid the evil usually attendant. 
 
 4. That there are good reasons to believe 
 that in associated effort that mode can be 
 found. 
 
 These were the conclusions. What was 
 to be done ? Mr. Hartley, who had gather- 
 ed these statistics, visited other cities, Bos- 
 ton, Philadelphia, Baltimore, &c, corre- 
 sponded with benevolent men and associa- 
 tions in yet other cities, gathered a mass of 
 facts, the result of experience and wisdom, 
 and finally a system was elaborated which 
 appears to be the most efficient, and the 
 least objectionable of any plan which has 
 ever been attempted. It combines the vital 
 principle of charity, that is love, with the 
 degree of practical judgment, without which 
 so many charities have been little better 
 than prodigalities, wasting on undeserving 
 objects that which ought to have been oil 
 and wine to suffering worth. 
 
 The experiment has had a fair trial, and 
 the result thus far is full of the most sub- 
 
214 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 stantial evidence that the thing will work 
 well. I will give as intelligible a view of 
 the system as my limits will allow. 
 
 " Its primary object is to discountenance 
 indiscriminate alms-giving, and put an end 
 to street-begging and vagrancy. Secondly, 
 it proposes to visit the poor at their dwel- 
 lings, carefully to examine their circum- 
 stances and extend to them appropriate re- 
 lief: and through the friendly intercourse 
 of visiters, to inculcate among them habits 
 of frugality, temperance, industry, and self- 
 dependence. 
 
 " To effect these important objects, the 
 city from the battery to 40th street, is di- 
 vided into sixteen districts, which are sub- 
 divided into 236 sections. Each district 
 has a responsible committee, and each sec- 
 tion an efficient visiter. Connected with 
 the arrangement are a £eneral agent, and a 
 central office, where is kept a register of the 
 persons who receive aid from this and other 
 benevolent associations, and from the city 
 authorities. A pocket directory is furnished 
 
THE POOR IN NEW YORK. 
 
 215 
 
 to every member of the association (that is, 
 every contributor to its funds), which shows 
 the name and residence of every visiter, 
 and the section committed to his care ; also 
 printed tickets for referring mendicants to 
 visiters. By this simple arrangement the 
 prompt visitation and relief of the poor are 
 secured, and the public no longer constrained 
 by appeals to their humanity, to bestow alms 
 on unknown applicants, who may be deserv- 
 ing or otherwise. Long experience has 
 shown the practice of indiscriminate alms- 
 giving to be contrary to every sound prin- 
 ciple of philanthropy ; yet it has hitherto 
 prevailed to a great extent, for want of an 
 instrumentality which would protect the 
 claims of the deserving, while it put an end 
 to the impositions of the unworthy. Such 
 an instrumentality is furnished by this asso- 
 ciation. By co-operating therefore with it, 
 every benevolent individual may follow the 
 impulses of his own heart, and contribute 
 to the comfort of his suffering fellow-beings 
 
216 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 without the hazard of encouraging Impos- 
 ture or vagrancy." 
 
 Now for the practical working of the 
 plan. Every kind-hearted individual wishes 
 to do something for the poor. But, fearing 
 that he will give to those who ought not be 
 aided, he will not drop a shilling into every 
 beggar's hat, or give a quarter to every men- 
 dicant that rings at his door. But he gives 
 what he pleases, perhaps a dollar, perhaps 
 five, or a hundred, to this society, and he 
 knows that every cent of it will be ju- 
 diciously and directly applied to the relief 
 of the poor, with as little danger of mistake 
 as attends any human organization. He 
 receives his little book containing the name 
 and residence of each visiter of each dis- 
 trict, and when an individual applies to him 
 for aid, he inquires the name and place of 
 abode. Suppose the applicant's name to 
 be Nahum Dixill, staying at 35 Cross street. 
 He opens his directory to Cross street, and 
 finds that the visiter for that street 13 Mr. E. 
 
THE POOR IN NEW YORK. 
 
 217 
 
 P. Woodruff, residing at 549 Pearl street, 
 and taking a card he fills it out as below: — 
 
 Mr. E. P. Woodruff, visiter, No. 549 Pearl 
 street, is requested to visit Nahum Dixill, at No. 
 
 35 Cross street. (Signed,) A. B , 
 
 Member N. Y. Association for the Improve 
 
 ment of the Condition of the Poor. 
 
 The applicant takes this card and proceeds 
 to the visiter, who has engaged to attend to 
 all the calls for that district. He imme- 
 diately looks into the case, and having 
 learned what is wanted, and how much, gives 
 the necessary relief, either on the spot, or 
 by an order on the depository, that will be 
 more permanent and efficacious. In this 
 plan I can see nothing defective, if there 
 can be found a corps of visiters with suffi- 
 cient benevolence of soul to perform this 
 service. And it seems, to the honour of 
 human nature be it said, that out of three or 
 four hundred thousand people in this city, 
 there are three hundred men who are wil- 
 ling, for the sake of Christ and the poor, 
 to go about doing good; and I do not 
 19 
 
218 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 doubt that five hundred or a thousand might 
 be found, who would take upon themselves 
 this duty, finding their reward in the sweet 
 consciousness of causing the afflicted to sing 
 for joy. These visiters not only attend to 
 any calls that may be addressed to them, 
 but they search their own district to ascer- 
 tain if there is any need of their aid, and 
 thus there is reasonable ground to believe 
 that if the system were adopted, and the 
 citizens generally would become members 
 of the association, substantial relief would 
 be extended to every deserving object of 
 charity within the bounds of the metropolis. 
 
 And now, does it not make you love 
 your species more to find them thus labour- 
 ing to relieve each other's woes ? " Man's 
 inhumanity to man" has made us blush a 
 thousand times. Is it not pleasant to know 
 that there are those who love to do good, 
 who deny themselves and take up the cross, 
 and silently, and beyond the reach of hu- 
 man praise, content with the " God bless 
 you" of the poor, penetrate the lurking- 
 
THE POOR IN NEW YORK. 
 
 219 
 
 places of wretchedness, and carry comfort 
 to them that mourn. 
 
 With such a corps of devoted and faith- 
 ful visiters traversing the streets, and lanes, 
 and alleys, on errands of mercy, we may 
 well believe that a system is in operation 
 more worthy of adoption, and less liable to 
 objection, than any which has yet been set 
 on foot in this or any other city. I can 
 readily see that these visiters will sometimes 
 be deceived by appearances, and withhold 
 relief from the worthy poor, and bestow it 
 on the undeserving. The abode of dire 
 poverty may sometimes wear the appear- 
 ance of neatness and comparative comfort ; 
 and this very fact may be construed as evi- 
 dence that the inmates are not absolutely 
 destitute, while squalid filth may move the 
 sympathy of a visiter, and extort alms for 
 objects that rather deserve punishment. 
 Here is occasion for the exercise of sound 
 discretion ; and on the fidelity of these self- 
 denying and thankworthy visiters in their 
 
220 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 labors of love, depends the usefulness of 
 this great institution. 
 
 In the course of their travels they meet 
 with cases, to read of which would make 
 your heart ache. The reverses of fortune 
 in the last eight years present some instan- 
 ces of sorrowful contrast, which those who 
 have always been poor or always rich can 
 not possibly appreciate. What would you 
 think of a family, that ten years ago rolled 
 through Broadway in their carriage, and 
 lived in luxury, now huddling together in a 
 coal-hole; the head of the family there pros- 
 trate with sickness, and not a friend to min- 
 ister to their wants. It would be very easy 
 to make a tale out of this that would move 
 the heart ; but what more eloquent than the 
 thought that follows this group into their 
 dark hiding-place, and there views them in 
 loneliness, sickness, hunger — what else is 
 wanting to complete the home of wretched- 
 ness ! May God keep us ever from being 
 so poor. 
 
 A poor widow was asked on Saturday 
 
THE POOR IN NEW YORK. 
 
 221 
 
 evening if she was in need of aid. She said 
 that she had food enough to last until Mon- 
 day, when she should be utterly destitute. 
 The visiter called on Monday, and found 
 her exhausted for want of food ; and what, 
 think you, was the occasion of her suffer- 
 ing? A widow, whose necessity was greater 
 than hers, had called on her, and she had 
 divided her living with her suffering sister! 
 The poor love to help the poor ; they know 
 how to feel for them, having been tempted 
 in all points like them. 
 
 There are many families in this city that 
 live in underground apartments, where a ray 
 of sunshine never travels ; and as you pass, 
 of a pleasant day, you may often see the 
 children, who have been brought up for air, 
 sunning themselves like turtles. The ways 
 and means the poor of the city have for 
 " getting a living," would afford a curious 
 subject of investigation. We sometimes 
 think that the old women who sell apples 
 at the corners of streets must have as hard 
 a time of it as any ; but they often make 
 19* 
 
222 
 
 LIFE HI THE CITY. 
 
 money by it. A friend of mine told me the 
 other day, that he knew a man who made a 
 thousand dollars in the course of a single 
 year by an apple stall, and if competition is 
 a sign of business being lively, this certainly 
 is a thriving trade. There are seventy-six 
 shops in the city, where those who are liard- 
 up may take what they have got, or what 
 they can lay their hands on, and exchange 
 it for half or a quarter of its value. A feel- 
 ing man will learn a long chapter of life in 
 New York by just calling, toward night of a 
 cold day, at one of the many pawnbrokers' 
 in Chatham street. He will see a row of 
 stalls, so arranged that each customer can 
 transact his business without being in con- 
 tact with another. A young woman will 
 steal in with a quick step, and in a low tone 
 of voice will ask what she can be allowed 
 on that cloak, which, with trembling fingers, 
 she proceeds to unfold from a bundle she 
 has brought. While this is going on, a col- 
 ored woman will enter and deposite a spoon, 
 perhaps half a dozen spoons, which she has 
 
THE POOR IN NEW YORK. 
 
 223 
 
 been sent with by some one who will keep 
 a servant, though she mvst part with her sil- 
 ver ; and then comes a man, a strong man, 
 and pledges a flute, or a picture, and takes 
 a few shillings, and marches away in silence 
 and sorrow. There may be no sighs or 
 tears in a pawnbroker's shop, but heavy 
 hearts are there daily. 
 
 Many people in New York will not know 
 what I mean by an " old-junk dealer ;" but 
 there are forty shops licensed for the busi- 
 ness, which is the purchase of all manner 
 of odds and ends of everything under the 
 sun, that anybody wants to sell, and, you 
 would think, nobody wants to buy. In these 
 places you will find old iron, old and odd 
 crockery, old furniture, old everything you 
 can think of; and these are the shops where 
 the thieving boys find a market for their pet- 
 ty spoils, and the poor for what marketable 
 articles may be given them in their levying 
 vagrancies through the streets. Often you 
 may see an old woman pawing over a heap 
 of dirt, thrown from an office into the street, 
 
224 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 and picking out every little article that by 
 any possibility can be turned into money. 
 There goes an old man, with a hooked wire, 
 with which he catches up every rag that is 
 in the gutter, which he deposites in a bag on 
 his back ; these he carries to the river, and 
 washes for sale. Here is a man with a 
 handcart, gathering bones in the alleys ; 
 part of them are worth boiling for soup, the 
 rest will find a market. These are a few 
 only of the ways and means of living in the 
 city, and it would be impossible to give a 
 complete picture of the interior life of the 
 metropolis, without revealing scenes from 
 which delicacy shrinks, and which must be 
 for ever unseen by the public eye. 
 
CHRISTMAS AND NEW-YEAR's. 225 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 CHRISTMAS AND NEW-YEAR's. 
 
 My readers in the country know that 
 these are great days there as well as here ; 
 and they will bear with me when I tell them 
 of the way we celebrate these annual festi- 
 vals. When I was young, the holydays in 
 the country were well kept, and the only 
 regret we ever felt about those days, was 
 caused by the fact that they came only once 
 a year. They come no oftener now, which 
 fact I mention without the fear of an alma- 
 nac to disprove the assertion ; but they come 
 more rapidly. And now that another sea- 
 son of pleasure and pastime is just at hand, 
 it seems but yesterday that Christmas was 
 here. So the years rush away ; one pres- 
 ses on the heel of another, and the great 
 tomb of ages gathers them all. 
 
226 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 I was about to speak of the way in which 
 the last holydays passed off in this gay city. 
 And first among the churches. Those of 
 the episcopal and Roman catholic denom- 
 inations are always opened, that day being 
 regarded by them as the anniversary of the 
 birth of Christ. The churches are dressed 
 with evergreens, from the country forests, 
 wreaths encircling the pillars, huge crosses 
 of greens standing on the walls, festoons 
 and stars arranged with taste, if taste it may 
 be called that thus expresses joy in temples 
 built for the spiritual worship of the living 
 God. But I am not finding fault with it. 
 They cut down branches and strewed them 
 in the way, when the Son of man came 
 riding on an ass, and I suppose those who 
 cut down branches and put them up in their 
 churches, intend to honour the advent of 
 the Saviour. And though I can see no fit- 
 ness in the thing, and to others it may ap- 
 pear foolish, I will respect the customs 01 
 those who, in their own way, love to pay 
 
CHRISTMAS AND NEW-TEAR's. 
 
 227 
 
 homage to the Lord of glory, the babe of 
 Bethlehem. 
 
 The last Christmas was one of the sweet- 
 est winter days I ever knew. The various 
 places of amusement were thronged by the 
 younger classes, and the streets never 
 seemed to me to show more signs of life 
 and pleasure, though the stores were chiefly 
 closed. As I was walking in Broadway 
 near St. Paul's, the crowds of people hur- 
 rying up and down on the walks, the car- 
 riages of all classes and names in the streets 
 jostling each other, so that crossing was next 
 to impossible, gave to the scene more than 
 its usual appearance of " confusion worse 
 confounded." I was marking the pleasure 
 which seemed to beam in the smiles of all 
 I met, and of the thousands happy in the 
 return of this season of mirth, when a 
 hearse, followed by six or seven carriages 
 of mourners, moved through the crowded 
 street, reminding me of Mrs. Hemans' 
 words : — 
 
 " Thou hast all seasons for thine own, oh Death!" 
 
228 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 This was my reflection, as two young men 
 passed me, and one of them said to the 
 other, as they looked at the funeral, 
 " They're going to put somebody to bed 
 with a shovel." My blood chilled at the 
 heartless ness of the remark, and I felt 
 ashamed to think that there was in the like- 
 ness of man a thing that could make such 
 cruel mockery of death's doings. I wanted 
 to give the wretch such a blow as I gave a 
 man on the wharf a fortnight ago. It was 
 a bitter cold morning, the coldest of last 
 winter, and I was down early at the river, 
 waiting for a steamboat to come in. A well- 
 dressed man, there with others on the same 
 errand, was fretting at the cold and giving 
 vent to his impatience, as if we cared to 
 hear his complaints. At length he muttered 
 out: "I declare, if it wasn't so cold, I'd 
 jump off the dock and done with it." I 
 looked at him and quietly observed : " You 
 will find it hot enough afterward, sir ; per- 
 haps you had better try it." The man was 
 hit; the bystanders smiled at his confusion, 
 
CHRISTMAS AND NEW-YEAR's. 
 
 229 
 
 and he slid silently away, so that we heard 
 no more of his grumblings. 
 
 But I was speaking of Christmas. It was 
 nearly eleven o'clock in the morning, and I 
 turned down Barclay street to St. Peter's 
 cathedral. Though not the largest, it is 
 one of the most splendid of the Romish 
 churches in this city. A statue of St. Pe- 
 ter holding the keys is over the front door, 
 his big toe ominously projecting beyond the 
 pedestal, and the interior is finished in ele- 
 gant style. A vast crowd w r as assembling; 
 it soon became too great for the building, 
 and the worshippers kneeled upon the stone 
 steps on the outside, opened their prayer- 
 books, and proceeded with their devotions, 
 with as much apparent fervor as if they were 
 nearer the altar, and in sight of the great 
 painting of the crucifixion scene, which 
 hangs over it, to touch the sympathies of 
 the devotees. The rich tones of the organ 
 fell on my soul, as I crowded through the 
 mass of men at the door ; the brilliant light 
 of multitudes of wax candles burning at the 
 20 
 
230 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 altar gave a singular appearance to the scene 
 within, and just as I entered, two boys, 
 " clothed in white raiment," ascended the 
 steps within the chancel swinging their cen- 
 sers ; the priest then advanced, displaying 
 on his back, which was toward the people, 
 a magnificent cross of his whole length 
 wrought on his surplice in gold ; he walked 
 up to each of the branching candlesticks 
 and offered incense, while the silent multi- 
 tudes looked reverently on, as if God were 
 pleased with the smoking sacrifice. " Per- 
 fectly pagan, is it not?" said I to a friend 
 who had strayed in from the same unworthy 
 motive that had brought me there ; and we 
 came away mourning over the darkness of 
 idolatry that reigns in the midst of the nine- 
 teenth century in the city of New York. 
 
 A few minutes afterward I was in a French 
 protestant episcopal church, where a little 
 company, perhaps a hundred, were assem- 
 bled. The church is a beautiful structure, 
 and was tastefully decorated with ever- 
 greens ; the pastor read the service in the 
 
CHRISTMAS AND NEW-YEAR's. 231 
 
 French language, and the congregation re- 
 sponded in the same tongue. The effect 
 was pleasing ; and I thought of the time 
 when the nations of the earth, each in their 
 own dialect, shall celebrate the praise of Je- 
 sus of Nazareth ! Glorious time ! Is not 
 the dawn now breaking in the East? 
 
 During the day, the children of various 
 presbyterian and other churches were as- 
 sembled in their respective places of wor- 
 ship, addresses were made, and Christmas 
 presents given — an occasion long to be re- 
 membered and richly prized by the groups 
 of little ones whom 1 met, with a cake in 
 one hand and a book in the other, which 
 they had just received as a token of their 
 teacher's affection, and a reward of their 
 own diligence. 
 
 You know the customs of society in the 
 city on new-year's day. For many years 
 past, the fashion has been growing, and 
 drawing more classes of society into it from 
 year to year, of devoting the day to making 
 social calls, by the gentlemen, of a few 
 
232 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 moments only, on the whole circle of their 
 visiting friends. The ladies at home are 
 sitting up to receive their company, who 
 are treated to refreshments, and remain just 
 long enough to exchange the compliments 
 of the season, and then hasten on in their 
 pilgrimage of pleasure. Were it not for 
 the temptations of the refreshment table, this 
 practice would be at once innocent and de- 
 lightful, giving an opportunity for a brief 
 and pleasing recognition of acquaintance, 
 under circumstances that shed a charm over 
 the face of society, soften many of its asperi- 
 ties, consign to forgetfulness slight aliena- 
 tions of the past year, and open the new 
 with a general declaration of friendship. It 
 brings together also for a moment those 
 whom duties during the year have not allow- 
 ed to meet, so that it often gives rise to the 
 remark, that one finds out who his friends 
 are when the new year comes. 
 
 There is but one drawback to this fashion ; 
 but one accompaniment that renders it of 
 questionablr propriety : and I am free to 
 
CHRISTMAS AND NEW-YEAR's. 233 
 
 say that it often more than balances all that 
 I have said or can say in favour of the city 
 customs of new-year's day. If our wives 
 and daughters, and magistrates, will compel 
 our young men to "look upon the wine 
 when it is red, when it giveth its colour in 
 the cup," if the hand of beauty presents the 
 sparkling glass, and the lips of beauty invite 
 the young to drink (temptations, few can 
 resist), then, I say, the evils are more than 
 all that can be urged in its defence, and it 
 ou2;ht to be discountenanced and abandon- 
 ed. The number of those who have laid 
 the foundations of intemperance on this 
 day. eternity alone can reveal. It has been 
 said *hat the practice of furnishing wines on 
 this occasion has been going out of fashion 
 of late years. I hope it is so. But the 
 practice is still continued in thousands of 
 religious families, and if there, of course also 
 in most of those on whom the example of 
 the apostle in eating meat and drinking wine 
 has exerted no power. 
 
 20* 
 
234 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITT. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE CONCLUSION. 
 
 And here we leave these sketches of life 
 in the city. It has its lights and shades, 
 but more shade than sunshine, doubtless the 
 reader has thought as he has followed me 
 through these chapters. And the contrast 
 is none the more striking on these pages 
 than it is in the streets. The rich and the 
 poor meet together as they do in the grave. 
 Extremes are always coming in contact. It 
 is but a step from the mansion where wealth 
 gathers its luxuries, to the cellar or garret 
 where hunger gnaws and cold pinches : from 
 the gorgeous temple where worship goes up 
 from purple cushions, to the cell where guilt 
 and wretchedness curse and groan. We 
 have been at the asylum where misery loses 
 its sting, and the heart with anguish torn 
 
THE CONCLUSION. 
 
 235 
 
 finds oil and wine for its wounds, and while 
 the misery pains the heart of sympathy, there 
 is comfort in the thought that it has found 
 friends to minister for its relief. 
 
 I have not always lived in the city. Up 
 in the country was my birthplace, and years 
 of childhood and youth in the green hills 
 are remembered with the freshness of yes- 
 terday; and never does a day pass over my 
 head, that I do not sigh in secret for the 
 time when I may break away from this wil- 
 derness of walls, and find a lodge in another 
 where nature is the builder, and the great 
 world is the temple of his workmanship and 
 praise. 
 
 Last winter, in the very dead of it, when 
 the city is chosen as the resort of those who 
 seek pleasure, and the country is forsaken 
 as cheerless and scarcely habitable, 1 drop- 
 ped my work, and fled out into the wide 
 world. It was a journey of a day or two to 
 travel a hundred miles into the interior, in 
 search of a friend who called me to spend a 
 few social days at his fireside. But in spite 
 
236 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 of the cold and the storm, both of which I 
 had abundantly on the way, I found his 
 house and his heart. It was late at night 
 when I reached the end of my journey, and 
 a long night's rest was the best restorer of 
 wasted strength. 
 
 When I arose the next morning, the sun 
 was high in the heavens, the storm was past, 
 and a scene of dazzling magnificence and 
 beauty was spread before my chamber win- 
 dow. The house commands a country 
 landscape of fifteen or twenty miles in every 
 direction, mountain and valley, woods and 
 running streams. For some weeks the 
 whole had been clothed with snow a few 
 inches in depth ; the rain of yesterday 
 freezing on the surface had covered it with 
 a glare of ice, and now, in the clear, cold 
 air of a winter morning, the bright sun 
 poured a flood of glory over the vast field 
 before me. Every twig of every tree was 
 a pendent jewel sparkling in the sunlight ; 
 the stubble, which the snow had not cov- 
 ered, glistened like diamonds strewn upon 
 
THE CONCLUSION. 
 
 237 
 
 a limitless mirror of gold ; even the fences, 
 clothed in ice, shone like lines of light 
 through the wide expanse, and all nature 
 seemed to leap and dance for joy as in the 
 morning of a new existence. " Great glory 
 this !" said I to my friend, as he startled 
 me from my revelling in the grandeur of 
 his own winter scenery. " Yes," said he, 
 " this is winter in the country." 
 
 Toward night I was sitting in the back 
 parlor, looking out upon the wide prospect 
 of hill, and vale, and forest. The sombre 
 clouds obscured the winter sky, and the 
 vast fields of snow lay like an infinite wind- 
 ing sheet over the cold form of lifeless na- 
 ture. I began to be sad. How dreary, 
 cheerless, desolate, is the world in winter ! 
 — when, lo, the farthest hill-top smiled, as 
 if heaven had let down a ray or two of 
 glory to play awhile upon the summit : soon 
 the great sun rolled from behind the clouds, 
 and poured a full tide of golden splendor, 
 dazzling and ravishing, over the world. I 
 did not know that winter could be so beau- 
 
238 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 tiful ; that death could have so much of 
 life ; that a winding-sheet could be so soon 
 converted into white raiment, radiant with 
 celestial brightness ; yet was this the glory 
 of nature in the winter ! This was gran- 
 deur and magnificence, the like of which we 
 have not in the city, and which brings to 
 the admirer of nature pure and elevated joy. 
 
 But our thoughts of the country, and the 
 yearnings of the heart we feel for it, are linked 
 with the summer scenery — the mountain 
 and the stream, the flowers and fields all 
 fresh from the hand of God, and redolent 
 of his praise. And the autumn, too, when 
 the hillside forest is covered with splendid 
 robes, of colors varied and lustrous, which 
 no painter's skill may imitate. 
 
 There too are social joys, the like of which 
 we can not have in such a crowd as this — 
 
 "For happiness and true philosophy 
 Are of the social, still and smiling kind. 
 This is the life which those who fret in guilt, 
 And guilty cities, never knew ; the life 
 Led hy primeval ages, uncorrupt, 
 When angels dwelt, and God himself, with man." 
 
THE CONCLUSION. 
 
 239 
 
 And as the Latin poet has said, that he who 
 ploughs the sea often wishes that he were a 
 happy landsman, and the man of the fields 
 often thinks he would love to try the seas, 
 so those of us who are pent up in the city 
 sigh after the dear delights of life in the 
 country, and they doubtless who are always 
 there, sometimes wish that they were here. 
 But this is human nature. Providence has 
 a place for each of us, and it is well if we 
 have grace to find our place to keep it. 
 
 There is work enough for us here in this 
 city. It is a world in itself. There are 
 sinners here as deep in the ruins of the fall 
 as there are in China, and the spirit of the 
 gospel should prompt us to seek them out, 
 and save them. If we can not live in the 
 city for the pleasure of life in its streets, we 
 may live here as those do who are sent with 
 messages of mercy to the heathen. We can 
 live here to do good : to scatter blessings in 
 our own paths, that shall serve instead of the 
 flowers we should find in the fields of a coun- 
 try home. 
 
240 
 
 LIFE IN THE CITY. 
 
 But there is a city in which it will be glo- 
 rious to dwell. It hath foundations of pre- 
 cious stones : its streets are gold, its gates 
 are pearl : its builder and maker is God ! 
 There shall not enter it anything that defi- 
 leth or worketh abomination. Its inhabitants 
 are holy : its air is pure : its light is the 
 smile of Him who reigns in it for ever. 
 
 " O when, thou city of my God, 
 Shall I thy courts ascend ?" 
 
 THE END* 
 
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 A Series of beautiful volumes of the Narrative kind, uniform in bind- 
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 The following are now ready : 
 MABEL GRANT. A Highland Story. 
 THE WOODCUTTER OF LEBANON. 
 LOUIS AND FRANK. 
 CLARA STANLEY. A Story for Girls. 
 THE CLAREMONT TALES. 
 THE CONVENT. By Miss M'Crindell. 
 FAR OFF. By the author of the " Peep of Day." 
 NEAR HOME. By the same author. 
 HAPPY HOME. By Dr. Hamilton. 
 JAMIE GORDON; or, the Orphan. 
 THE CHILDREN OF THE MANSE. By Mrs. Duncan. 
 TALES OF THE SCOTTISH PEASANTRY. 
 SCHOOL DAYS AND COMPANIONS. 
 THE INDIAN TRIBES OF GUIANA. 
 HOLIDAY HOUSE. By Miss Sinclair. 
 OLIVE LEAVES. By Mrs. Sigourney. 
 BROTHER AND SISTER. 
 POLLOK'S TALES OF THE COVENANTERS. 
 THE RAINBOW IN THE NORTH. 
 THE INFANT'S PROGRESS. By Mrs. Sherwood, 
 THE WORLD OF WATERS. 
 BLOSSOMS OF CHILDHOOD. 
 MAY DUNDAS. A Tale. 
 ABBEOKUTA; or, Sunrise ir +he Tropics. 
 THE FAMILY AT HEATFEjSDALE.