A Little Girl in Old New York

by Amanda M. Douglas

Katy Rhodes was waiting at a table with her mother, but she found an opportunity to whisper to Hanny "that her lace had sold the very first thing, and there had been such a call for it she just wished they had had a hundred yards."

That pleased the child very much.

"It was like a store," said Hanny to her mother; "only everybody seemed to know everybody, and there were all kinds of things. So many people came for their suppers they must have made lots of money. And I'm as tired as I can be, only it was beautiful."

Martha's church was to have their Christmas Sunday-school anniversary, and Charles Reed was to sing a solo with a chorus of four voices. The Deans and half the people in the street went. Margaret and Dr. Hoffman, and this time John and Ben took the little girl. Mother had been up at Steve's all day.

There was a large platform at the end of the church, and crowds of pretty children dressed in white, ranged in tiers one above another. After a prayer and singing by the congregation the real exercises began. The body of children sang some beautiful hymns, then there were several spirited dialogues, and separate pieces, very well rendered indeed. When it came "bonnie Prince Charlie's" turn, he seemed to hesitate a moment. Hanny thought she would be frightened to death before all the people. I think Charles would have been a year ago.

The piano began the soft accompaniment. After the first few notes the sweet young voice swelled out like the warble of a bird. People were silent with surprise and admiration. The fair, boyish face and slim figure looked smaller there on the platform. The face had a youthful sweetness that nowadays would be pronounced artistic.

The chorus came in beautifully. There were three verses in the solo, and really, I do not know as the audience were to blame for applauding. The boy had to come out and sing again, this time a pretty Christmas carol that they had practised at singing-school.

When the exercises were finished the children were all taken down-stairs and they looked very pretty flitting about. There was another surprise, one that greatly interested the little girl. In one prettily arranged booth were two curious small beings who had a history. They had already been in Sunday-school on two occasions. A missionary to China, seeing these little girls about to be sold, had rescued them by buying them himself. He had brought them back on his return, and now kindly disposed people were making up a sum to provide them with a home and educate them.

Hanny pressed forward holding John's hand tightly. They were so strange-looking. The larger and older one was not at all pretty, but the younger one had a sweet sort of shyness and was not so stolid. Their yellow-brown skins, oblique dark eyes, black brows, and black hair done up in a remarkable fashion with some long pins, and their Chinese attire seemed very curious. The gentleman with them said there were hundreds of little girls sold in China, and that women bought them for future wives for their sons, and treated them like bond slaves. These children's feet had not been cramped, this was done mainly to the higher orders. He had some Chinese shoes worn by grown women, and they were such short, queer things, like some of the pincushions made for the Fair.

We didn't suppose then the Chinese would come and live with us and have a Chinatown in the heart of the city; do our laundry work and take possession of our kitchens; that the blue shirts and queer pointed shoes would be a common sight in our streets. So the Chinese children were a curiosity. Indeed, several years elapsed before Hanny saw another inhabitant of the Flowery Kingdom.