THE LITTLE THIEF.
A few years ago, there lived in the great city a little girl, so small that no one would ever have thought her nine years old. Yet she had passed nine sad years on earth. She lived with a couple who had a cellar of their own at the Five Points. They were coarse, brutal people, and spent the greater part of their time in drinking and fighting. Little Nellie, for so we shall call her, went in rags, and was frequently beaten with severity by those who called themselves her parents, though no one knew whether she was their child or not. In the long winters she almost perished with the cold, and was nearly half famished with hunger. It was a wonder how she managed to live; for in the coldest weather she was sent back and forth, through the freezing streets, by her so-called parents, her only protection being a ragged shawl, which she wrapped tightly around her head. Her little feet and legs were bare and frost-bitten, and often left red tracks on the pure white snow. At night her bed was a piece of old carpeting in a dark corner of the cellar, where she cried herself to sleep, and wished she could die. Young as she was, death was not terrible to her, for she regarded it as a release from her sufferings. Had she known how to pray, she would have prayed for it; but, in her ignorance she merely wished to die.
Do not be shocked, reader, when we say she never prayed. The truth is that, with the exception of the constant blasphemy of the people with whom she lived, and of this she heard too much, she rarely heard of God. Once she went into a church, and heard a man talk about Him in a way she could not understand. When she heard the organ it sounded so sweet that she thought God must be up there, and tried to see him; but a great rough man put her out of the church, and told her it was no place for such as her, (alas! God's house no place for the poor!) and that if she ever came there again he would hand her over to the police. She went away feeling shocked and hurt, and fully convinced that God did not like beggars. Then she remembered how nice and warm the church was, and how fine the people were dressed, and she began to wonder why she had been made so poor and helpless.
"Ah! me," she sighed, "I'm not God's child. He wouldn't notice me, I'm so poor, and dirty, and my feet are so frost-bitten."
She had no one to tell her how much God cares for the poor, how he watches over them, and notes every good and bad deed done to them. She thought he was careless of her; and when some one told her he could do every thing, she wondered why he did not make her more comfortable, and give her nice warm clothes to wear. Finally, little Nellie began to think him a cruel, harsh God, and at last she came to hate him. Terribly depraved, you will say, dear reader; but, alack, was she to blame? God help us! there are many more like her in the great city.
When Nellie was eight years old, the husband of the woman with whom she lived died, and the woman took to drinking harder than ever. This made Nellie's lot worse than before the man's death. Then she had had some brief respite from persecution; for, though the man had often beaten her, he had sometimes saved her from the fury of his drunken wife. Now there was no one to befriend her. The woman was rarely free from the influence of liquor, and blows were showered upon the child more frequently than ever. Poor little Nellie! her troubles increased every day, and her desire to die became more eager. Sometimes she would go down to the piers, and gaze on the dark waters that swept beneath them, and would wonder if she would be at peace if she drowned herself. But, though not afraid of death, the waters looked so fierce and angry that they frightened her, and she would go away shuddering with a dread that she could not understand. But for this, she would have sought in the cool waves the rest for which she longed.
Matters went on from bad to worse, but at last they came to an end, but not in the way Nellie wished. The woman with whom she lived began to think that the child was old enough to be of some use to her, for she was now nine years old. Alas! the use she made of her. There was nothing honest which so young a child could do, so she resolved to try her at dishonesty. It was a fearfully cold winter, and the woman's intemperate habits had prevented her from earning a living. To remedy this, she sent Nellie out with a basket, and told her to go to a certain street where she had seen a number of bales of cotton, partly opened, lying before a store. She bade the child watch her opportunity, and, when no one was looking, to fill the basket, and run away with it to her as rapidly as possible. Nellie did not like the undertaking, and begged that she might not be sent; but the woman brutally told her if she did not go and return in an hour, she would kill her.
Nellie started out with a heavy heart, for she had a vague foreboding that something terrible was about to happen to her. She reached the place, found the cotton, and, as no one was looking, soon filled her basket. She was turning away, when a heavy hand was laid upon her shoulder, and a rough voice exclaimed:
"You little thief! I've caught you, have I?"
Nellie glanced up in terror. A richly dressed man had hold of her, and was shaking her roughly.
"Please, sir, let me go, and I'll put the cotton back."
"No you will not," he said coldly. "I'll teach you a lesson."
As he spoke, he beckoned a policeman from across the street, and told him to arrest the child for stealing a dollar's worth of cotton. Nellie was taken before a magistrate, and, the theft being proved, was sent on for trial at the next term of the Court, and the merchant went away satisfied. There was no one to "go bail" for her, and she was remanded to the Tombs until the session of the court.
It made the jailer's heart ache to see that little child enter the cell in which his duty compelled him to place her. He wondered why she had not been sent to one of the numerous reformatory establishments, where she might be saved from a life of crime. But no, the child had been charged with theft, and the law required her to be tried for the crime, and if convicted, to be sent to prison, to share the company of felons, and sink, perhaps into infamy. God Help us, if this is always to be the character of New York justice.
Nellie's life in prison was both pleasant and terrible. It was pleasant, inasmuch as it freed her from the brutal woman with whom she had lived, and terrible, because it left her alone all night in a cold, dark cell.
At last, however, the end came. It was a terribly cold night, and the prisoners in their cells suffered intensely. Some heard low sobs in little Nellie's cell, but no attention was paid to them. The next morning the turnkey went to visit her on his morning rounds, and he found her lying stiff and cold. She had frozen to death during the night, and her wish had been granted. The little thief had gone to the bar of a judge who tempers justice with mercy, and who cares for those who are helpless and oppressed.
There are some in the great city who will remember this incident, as it has not been very long since its occurrence.