Cast Adrift

T >> T. S. Arthur >> Cast Adrift

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"Let me show you how this is done. A man or a woman thirsting for
liquor will steal anything to get money for whisky. The article
stolen may be a coat, a pair of boots or a dress--something worth
from five to twenty dollars. It is taken to one of these harpies,
and sold for fifty cents or a dollar--anything to get enough for a
drunken spree. I am speaking only of what I know. Then, again, a man
or a woman gets stupidly drunk in one of the whisky-shops. Before he
or she is thrown out upon the street, the thrifty liquor-seller
'goes through' the pockets of the insensible wretch, and confiscates
all he finds. Again, a vile woman has robbed one of her visitors,
and with the money in her pocket goes to a dram-shop. The sum may be
ten dollars or it may be two hundred. A glass or so unlooses her
tongue; she boasts of her exploit, and perhaps shows her booty. Not
once in a dozen times will she take this booty away. If there are
only a few women in the shop, the liquor-seller will most likely
pounce on her at once and get the money by force. There is no
redress. To inform the police is to give information against
herself. He may give her back a little to keep her quiet or he may
not, just as he feels about it. If he does not resort to direct
force, he will manage in some other way to get the money. I could
take you to the dram-shop of a man scarcely a stone's throw from
this place who came out of the State's prison less than four years
ago and set up his vile trap where it now stands. He is known to be
worth fifty thousand dollars to-day. How did he make this large sum?
By the profits of his bar? No one believes this. It has been by
robbing his drunken and criminal customers whenever he could get
them in his power."

"I am oppressed by all this," said Mr. Dinneford. "I never dreamed
of such a state of things."

"Nor does one in a hundred of our good citizens, who live in quiet
unconcern with this pest-house of crime and disease in their midst.
And speaking of disease, let me give you another fact that should be
widely known. Every obnoxious epidemic with which our city has been
visited in the last twenty years has originated here--ship fever,
relapsing fever and small-pox--and so, getting a lodgment in the
body politic, have poured their malignant poisons into the blood and
diseased the whole. Death has found his way into the homes of
hundreds of our best citizens through the door opened for him here."

"Can this be so?" exclaimed Mr. Dinneford.

"It is just as I have said," was replied. "And how could it be
otherwise? Whether men take heed or not, the evil they permit to lie
at their doors will surely do them harm. Ignorance of a statute, a
moral or a physical law gives no immunity from consequence if the
law be transgressed--a fact that thousands learn every year to their
sorrow. There are those who would call this spread of disease,
originating here, all over our city, a judgment from God, to punish
the people for that neglect and indifference which has left such a
hell as this in their midst. I do not so read it. God has no
pleasure in punishments and retributions. The evil comes not from
him. It enters through the door we have left open, just as a thief
enters our dwellings, invited through our neglect to make the
fastenings sure. It comes under the operations of a law as unvarying
as any law in physics. And so long as we have this epidemic-breeding
district in the very heart of our city, we must expect to reap our
periodical harvests of disease and death. What it is to be next
year, or the next, none can tell."

"Does not your perpetual contact with all this give your mind an
unhealthy tone--a disposition to magnify its disastrous
consequences?" said Mr. Dinneford.

The missionary dropped his eyes. The flush and animation went out of
his face.

"I leave you to judge for yourself," he answered, after a brief
silence, and in a voice that betrayed a feeling of disappointment.
"You have the fact before you in the board of health, prison,
almshouse, police, house of refuge, mission and other reports that
are made every year to the people. If they hear not these, neither
will they believe, though one rose from the dead."

"All is too dreadfully palpable for unbelief," returned Mr.
Dinneford. "I only expressed a passing thought."

"My mind may take an unhealthy tone--does often, without doubt,"
said Mr. Paulding. "I wonder, sometimes, that I can keep my head
clear and my purposes steady amid all this moral and physical
disorder and suffering. But exaggeration of either this evil or its
consequences is impossible. The half can never be told."

Mr. Dinneford rose to go. As he did so, two little Italian children,
a boy and a girl, not over eight years of age, tired, hungry,
pinched and starved-looking little creatures, the boy with a harp
slung over his shoulder, and the girl carrying a violin, went past
on the other side.

"Where in the world do all of these little wretches come from?"
asked Mr. Dinneford. "They are swarming our streets of late.
Yesterday I saw a child who could not be over two years of age
tinkling her triangle, while an older boy and girl were playing on a
harp and violin. She seemed so cold and tired that it made me sad to
look at her. There is something wrong about this."

"Something very wrong," answered the missionary. "Doubtless you
think these children are brought here by their parents or near
relatives. No such thing. Most of them are slaves. I speak
advisedly. The slave-trade is not yet dead. Its abolition on the
coast of Africa did not abolish the cupidity that gave it birth. And
the 'coolie' trade, one of its new forms, is not confined to the
East."

"I am at a loss for your meaning," said Mr. Dinneford.

"I am not surprised. The new slave-trade, which has been carried on
with a secresy that is only now beginning to attract attention, has
its source of supply in Southern Italy, from which large numbers of
children are drawn every year and brought to this country.

"The headquarters of this trade--cruel enough in some of its
features to bear comparison with the African slave-trade itself--are
in New York. From this city agents are sent out to Southern Italy
every year, where little intelligence and great poverty exist. These
agents tell grand stories of the brilliant prospects offered to the
young in America. Let me now read to you from the published
testimony of one who has made a thorough investigation of this
nefarious business, so that you may get a clear comprehension of its
extent and iniquity.

"He says: 'One of these agents will approach the father of a family,
and after commenting upon the beauty of his children, will tell him
that his boys "should be sent at once to America, where they must in
time become rich." "There are no poor in America." "The children
should go when young, so that they may grow up with the people and
the better acquire the language." "None are too young or too old to
go to America." The father, of course, has not the means to go
himself or to send his children to this delightful country. The
agent then offers to take the children to America, and to pay forty
or fifty dollars to the father upon his signing an indenture
abandoning all claims upon them. He often, also, promises to pay a
hundred or more at the end of a year, but, of course, never does it.

"'After the agent has collected a sufficient number of children,
they are all supplied with musical instruments, and the trip on foot
through Switzerland and France begins. They are generally shipped to
Genoa, and often to Marseilles, and accomplish the remainder of the
journey to Havre or Calais by easy stages from village to village.
Thus they become a paying investment from the beginning. This
journey occupies the greater portion of the summer months; and after
a long trip in the steerage of a sailing-vessel, the unfortunate
children land at Castle Garden. As the parents never hear from them
again, they do not know whether they are doing well or not.

"'They are too young and ignorant to know how to get themselves
delivered from oppression; they do not speak our language, and find
little or no sympathy among the people whom they annoy. They are
thus left to the mercy of their masters, who treat them brutally,
and apparently without fear of the law or any of its officers. They
are crowded into small, ill-ventilated, uncarpeted rooms, eighteen
or twenty in each, and pass the night on the floor, with only a
blanket to protect them from the severity of the weather. In the
mornings they are fed by their temporary guardian with maccaroni,
served in the filthiest manner in a large open dish in the centre of
the room, after which they are turned out into the streets to beg or
steal until late at night.

"'More than all this, when the miserable little outcasts return to
their cheerless quarters, they are required to deliver every cent
which they have gathered during the day; and if the same be deemed
insufficient, the children are carefully searched and soundly
beaten.

"'The children are put through a kind of training in the arts of
producing discords on their instruments, and of begging, in the
whole of which the cruelty of the masters and the stolid submission
of the pupils are the predominant features. The worst part of all is
that the children become utterly unfitted for any occupation except
vagrancy and theft.'

"You have the answer to your question, 'Where do all these little
wretches come from?'" said the missionary as he laid aside the paper
from which he had been reading. "Poor little slaves!"

CHAPTER XXII.

_EDITH'S_ life, as we have seen, became lost, so to speak, in
charities. Her work lay chiefly with children, She was active in
mission-schools and in two or three homes for friendless little
ones, and did much to extend their sphere of usefulness. Her
garments were plain and sombre, her fair young face almost
colorless, and her aspect so nun-like as often to occasion remark.

Her patience and tender ways with poor little children, especially
with the youngest, were noticed by all who were associated with her.
Sometimes she would show unusual interest in a child just brought to
one of the homes, particularly if it were a boy, and only two or
three years old. She would hover about it and ask it questions, and
betray an eager concern that caused a moment's surprise to those who
noticed her. Often, at such times, the pale face would grow warm
with the flush of blood sent out by her quicker heartbeats, and her
eyes would have a depth of expression and a brightness that made her
beauty seem the reflection of some divine beatitude. Now and then it
was observed that her manner with these little waifs and
cast-adrifts that were gathered in from the street had in it an
expression of pain, that her eyes looked at them sadly, sometimes
tearfully. Often she came with light feet and a manner almost
cheery, to go away with eyes cast down and lips set and curved and
steps that were slow and heavy.

Time had not yet solved the mystery of her baby's life or death; and
until it was solved, time had no power to abate the yearning at her
heart, to dull the edge of anxious suspense or to reconcile her to a
Providence that seemed only cruel. In her daily prayers this thought
of cruelty in God often came in to hide his face from her, and she
rose from her knees more frequently in a passion of despairing tears
than comforted. How often she pleaded with God, weeping bitter
tears, that he would give her certainty in place of terrible doubts!
Again, she would implore his loving care over her poor baby,
wherever it might be.

So the days wore on, until nearly three years had elapsed since
Edith's child was born.

It was Christmas eve, but there were no busy hands at work, made
light by loving hearts, in the home of Mr. Dinneford. All its
chambers were silent. And yet the coming anniversary was not to go
uncelebrated. Edith's heart was full of interest for the children of
the poor, the lowly, the neglected and the suffering, whom Christ
came to save and to bless. Her anniversary was to be spent with
them, and she was looking forward to its advent with real pleasure.

"We have made provision for four hundred children, said her father.
"The dinner is to be at twelve o'clock, and we must be there by nine
or ten. We shall be busy enough getting everything ready. There are
forty turkeys to cut up and four hundred plates to fill."

"And many willing hands to do it," remarked Edith, with a quiet
smile; "ours among the rest."

"You'd better keep away from there," spoke up Mrs. Dinneford, with a
jar in her voice. "I don't see what possesses you. You can find poor
little wretches anywhere, if you're so fond of them, without going
to Briar street. You'll bring home the small-pox or something
worse."

Neither Edith nor her father made any reply, and there fell a
silence on the group that was burdensome to all. Mrs. Dinneford felt
it most heavily, and after the lapse of a few minutes withdrew from
the room.

"A good dinner to four hundred hungry children, some of them half
starved," said Edith as her mother shut the door. "I shall enjoy the
sight as much as they will enjoy the feast."

A little after ten o'clock on the next morning, Mr. Dinneford and
Edith took their way to the mission-school in Briar street. They
found from fifteen to twenty ladies and gentlemen already there, and
at work helping to arrange the tables, which were set in the two
long upper rooms. There were places for nearly four hundred
children, and in front of each was an apple, a cake and a biscuit,
and between every four a large mince pie. The forty turkeys were at
the baker's, to be ready at a little before twelve o'clock, the
dinner-hour, and in time for the carvers, who were to fill the four
hundred plates for the expected guests.

At eleven o'clock Edith and her father went down to the chapel on
the first floor, where the children had assembled for the morning
exercises, that were to continue for an hour.

Edith had a place near the reading-desk where she could see the
countenances of all those children who were sitting side by side in
row after row and filling every seat in the room, a restless, eager,
expectant crowd, half disciplined and only held quiet by the order
and authority they had learned to respect. Such faces as she looked
into! In scarcely a single one could she find anything of true
childhood, and they were so marred by suffering and evil! In vain
she turned from one to another, searching for a sweet, happy look or
a face unmarked by pain or vice or passion. It made her heart ache.
Some were so hard and brutal in their expression, and so mature in
their aspect, that they seemed like the faces of debased men on
which a score of years, passed in sensuality and crime, had cut
their deep deforming lines, while others were pale and wasted, with
half-scared yet defiant eyes, and thin, sharp, enduring lips, making
one tearful to look at them. Some were restless as caged animals,
not still for a single instant, hands moving nervously and bodies
swaying to and fro, while others sat stolid and almost as immovable
as stone, staring at the little group of men and women in front who
were to lead them in the exercises of the morning.

At length one face of the many before her fixed the eyes of Edith.
It was the face of a little boy scarcely more than three years old.
He was only a few benches from her, and had been hidden from view by
a larger boy just in front of him. When Edith first noticed this
child, he was looking at her intently from a pair of large, clear
brown eyes that had in them a wistful, hungry expression. His hair,
thick and wavy, had been smoothly brushed by some careful hand, and
fell back from a large forehead, the whiteness and smoothness of
which was noticeable in contrast with those around him. His clothes
were clean and good.

As Edith turned again and again to the face of this child, the
youngest perhaps in the room, her heart began to move toward him.
Always she found him with his great earnest eyes upon her. There
seemed at last to be a mutual fascination. His eyes seemed never to
move from her face; and when she tried to look away and get
interested in other faces, almost unconsciously to herself her eyes
would wander back, and she would find herself gazing at the child.

At eleven o'clock Mr. Paulding announced that the exercises for the
morning would begin, when silence fell on the restless company of
undisciplined children. A hymn was read, and then, as the leader
struck the tune, out leaped the voices of these four hundred
children, each singing with a strange wild abandon, many of them
swaying their heads and bodies in time to the measure. As the first
lines of the hymn,

"Jesus, gentle Shepherd, lead us,
Much we need thy tender care,"

swelled up from the lips of those poor neglected children, the eyes
of Edith grew blind with tears.

After a prayer was offered up, familiar addresses, full of kindness
and encouragement, were made to the children, interspersed with
singing and other appropriate exercises. These were continued for an
hour. At their close the children were taken up stairs to the two
long school-rooms, in which their dinner was to be served. Here were
Christmas trees loaded with presents, wreaths of evergreen on the
walls and ceilings, and illuminated texts hung here and there, and
everything was provided to make the day's influence as beautiful and
pleasant as possible to the poor little ones gathered in from
cheerless and miserable homes.

Meantime, the carvers had been very busy at work on the forty
turkeys--large, tender fellows, full of dressing and cooked as
nicely as if they had been intended for a dinner of
aldermen--cutting them up and filling the plates. There was no
stinting of the supply. Each plate was loaded with turkey, dressing,
potatoes that had been baked with the fowls, and a heaping spoonful
of cranberry sauce, and as fast as filled conveyed to the tables by
the lady attendants, who had come, many of them, from elegant homes,
to assist the good missionary's wife and the devoted teachers of the
mission-school in this labor of love. And so, when the four hundred
hungry children came streaming into the rooms, they found tables
spread with such bounty as the eyes of many of them had never looked
upon, and kind gentlemen and beautiful ladies already there to place
them at these tables and serve them while eating.

It was curious and touching, and ludicrous sometimes, to see the
many ways in which the children accepted this bountiful supply of
food. A few pounced upon it like hungry dogs, devouring whole
platefuls in a few minutes, but most of them kept a decent restraint
upon themselves in the presence of the ladies and gentlemen, for
whom they could not but feel an instinctive respect. Very few of
them could use at fork except in the most awkward manner. Some tried
to cut their meat, but failing in the task, would seize it with
their hands and eagerly convey it to their hungry mouths. Here and
there would be seen a mite of a boy sitting in a kind of maze before
a heaped-up dinner-plate, his hands, strangers, no doubt, to knife
or fork, lying in his lap, and his face wearing a kind of helpless
look. But he did not have to wait long. Eyes that were on the alert
soon saw him; ready hands cut his food, and a cheery voice
encouraged him to eat. If these children had been the sons and
daughters of princes, they could not have been ministered to with a
more gracious devotion to their wants and comfort than was shown by
their volunteer attendants.

Edith, entering into the spirit of the scene, gave herself to the
work in hand with an interest that made her heart glow with
pleasure. She had lost sight of the little boy in whom she had felt
so sudden and strong an interest, and had been searching about for
him ever since the children came up from the chapel. At last she saw
him, shut in and hidden between two larger boys, who were eating
with a hungry eagerness and forgetfulness of everything around them
almost painful to see. He was sitting in front of his heaped-up
plate, looking at the tempting food, with his knife and fork lying
untouched on the table. There was a dreamy, half-sad,
half-bewildered look about him.

"Poor little fellow!" exclaimed Edith as soon as she saw him, and in
a moment she was behind his chair.

"Shall I cut it up for you?" she asked as she lifted his knife and
fork from the table.

The child turned almost with a start, and looked up at her with a
quick flash of feeling on his face. She saw that he remembered her.

"Let me fix it all nicely," she said as she stooped over him and
commenced cutting up his piece of turkey. The child did not look at
his plate while she cut the food, but with his head turned kept his
large eyes on her countenance.

"Now it's all right," said Edith, encouragingly, as she laid the
knife and fork on his plate, taking a deep breath at the same time,
for her heart beat so rapidly that her lungs was oppressed with the
inflowing of blood. She felt, at the same time, an almost
irresistible desire to catch him up into her arms and draw him
lovingly to her bosom. The child made no attempt to eat, and still
kept looking at her.

"Now, my little man," she said, taking his fork and lifting a piece
of the turkey to his mouth. It touched his palate, and appetite
asserted its power over him; his eyes went down to his plate with a
hungry eagerness. Then Edith put the fork into his hand, but he did
not know how to use it, and made but awkward attempts to take up the
food.

Mrs. Paulding, the missionary's wife, came by at the moment, and
seeing the child, put her hand on him, and said, kindly,

"Oh, it's little Andy," and passed on.

"So your name's Andy?"

"Yes, ma'am." It was the first time Edith had heard his voice. It
fell sweet and tender on her ears, and stirred her heart strangely.

"Where do you live?"

He gave the name of a street she had never heard of before.

"But you're not eating your dinner. Come, take your fork just so.
There! that's the way;" and Edith took his hand, in which he was
still holding the fork, and lifted two or three mouthfuls, which he
ate with increasing relish. After that he needed no help, and seemed
to forget in the relish of a good dinner the presence of Edith, who
soon found others who needed her service.

The plentiful meal was at last over, and the children, made happy
for one day at least, were slowly dispersing to their dreary homes,
drifting away from the better influences good men and women had been
trying to gather about them even for a little while. The children
were beginning to leave the tables when Edith, who had been busy
among them, remembered the little boy who had so interested her, and
made her way to the place where he had been sitting. But he was not
there. She looked into the crowd of boys and girls who were pressing
toward the door, but could not see the child. A shadow of
disappointment came over her feelings, and a strange heaviness
weighed over her heart.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said to herself. "I wanted to see him
again."

She pressed through the crowd of children, and made her way down
among them to the landing below and out upon the street, looking
this way and that, but could not see the child. Then she returned to
the upper rooms, but her search was in vain. Remembering that Mrs.
Paulding had called him by name, she sought for the missionary's
wife and made inquiry about him.

"Do you mean the little fellow I called Andy?" said Mrs. Paulding.

"Yes, that's the one," returned Edith.

"A beautiful boy, isn't he?"

"Indeed he is. I never saw such eyes in a child. Who is he, Mrs.
Paulding, and what is he doing here? He cannot be the child of
depraved or vicious parents."

"I do not think he is. But from whence he came no one knows. He
drifted in from some unknown land of sorrow to find shelter on our
inhospitable coast. I am sure that God, in his wise providence, sent
him here, for his coming was the means of saving a poor debased man
who is well worth the saving."

Then she told in a few words the story of Andy's appearance at Mr.
Hall's wretched hovel and the wonderful changes that followed--how a
degraded drunkard, seemingly beyond the reach of hope and help, had
been led back to sobriety and a life of honest industry by the hand
of a little child cast somehow adrift in the world, yet guarded and
guided by Him who does not lose sight in his good providence of even
a single sparrow.

"Who is this man, and where does he live?" asked Mr. Dinneford, who
had been listening to Mrs. Paulding's brief recital.

"His name is Andrew Hall," was replied.

"Andrew Hall!" exclaimed Mr. Dinneford, with a start and a look of
surprise.

"Yes, sir. That is his name, and he is now living alone with the
child of whom we have been speaking, not very far from here, but in
a much better neighborhood. He brought Andy around this morning to
let him enjoy the day, and has come for him, no doubt, and taken him
home."

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