The Old Homestead

by Ann S. Stephens

"I say, sir, there does seem to be a doubt if this poor lady is not
really ill. Perhaps, you might as well take her to the Alms House
Commissioner first. He may think it right to send her up to the
Hospital, and, then, she need not go before a magistrate."

"And can we do this? can she be taken directly to a hospital?"

"If the Commissioner pleases, he has the power to send her there at once."

"Then order the man to drive to the Commissioner's office," cried the stranger, eagerly. "I thought that in this great city the unfortunate might find shelter short of a prison. Tell him to drive on."

The door was closed; the carriage moved on; and in it sat the generous stranger, with the head of that poor invalid resting on his shoulder, supporting her with all the benign gentleness of a father. He felt that the hot breath floating across his cheek was heavy with contagion; he knew that fever raged and burned in the blue veins that swelled over those drooping arms and the unstockinged feet, but, he neither shrank nor trembled at the danger. Possessed of that pure and holy courage which tranquilly meets all peril when it presents itself—a courage utterly beyond that selfish bravado which mocks at death and exults in carnage—he scarcely gave his own position a thought. Bravery, with this man, was a principle, not an excitement. He was fearless because he was good; and, from this cause, also, was kindly and unpretending.

The carriage drew up in Chambers street, not far from the place where the cart had stood with poor Chester's body upon it, not an hour before. The stranger composed Mrs. Chester on the seat, and placed a cushion against the carriage for her head to rest on; then, opening a gate, he hurried through the narrow flower-garden that ran between the old Alms House and Chambers street, crossed through one of those broad halls to be found in the basement, lined on each side with public officers, and, mounting half a dozen steps, he found himself in the Park. An Irish woman sat upon the steps of the nearest entrance, holding a forlorn bundle in her lap, and with a ragged baby playing with its little soiled feet on the pavement before her. This woman turned her head, and nodded toward the door when he inquired for the Commissioner's office, then bent her eyes again with a dead heavy gaze upon the pavement. The stranger, mounting the steps, found himself in a place utterly new and bewildering to him.

It happened to be "pay-day" for the out-door poor, and, into the ante-room of the Alms House, the alleys, rear buildings and dens of the city, once a fortnight, pour forth their human misery. The room was nearly full, and, amid this mass of poverty—such as he, fresh from the pure country air, had never even dreamed of—the stranger stood overpowered.

There is something horrible in the aspect of poverty when it reaches that low and bitter level that seeks relief in the lobby of an Alms House! The stranger looked around, and the philanthropy within him was put to its severest test. For the first time in his whole life he saw poverty in one dark, struggling mass clamoring for money! money! money! coarse, grasping poverty, such as crushes and kills all the honest pride of man's nature.

The room, large as it was, appeared more than half full, and not a single happy face was there. At the upper end was a platform, reached by two or three steps, and fenced in by a low wooden railing, along which ran a continuous desk. At this desk half a dozen clerks and visitors sat, with ponderous and soiled books spread open before them.

Up to this railing pressed the want-stricken crowd, the strong and healthy bustling and crowding back the fallen and infirm. Here old women struggled in the human tide, some casting fierce and quarrelsome glances at each other, others shrinking back with tears in their eyes, unequal to the coarse strife. Here, too, were men lean and gaunt with the hunger of a long sea voyage, elbowed aside by some brawny armed woman, who clamored loudly of the children she had left fast locked up in her little place, that she could but just pay the rent for. Here, too, were young girls, children with an aged, worn look, like the fruit that withers to half its size before it ripens. Most heartrending of all, persons of real refinement were mingled up with this rude mass; poor wretches who had indeed seen better days, and their helpless, broken-hearted looks, the remnants of early sensitiveness, that still clung around them, was pitiful to behold.