"The little guide has gone back, and we go now to another address—a back cellar in Oak Street—damp, dark, so that one at mid-day could hardly see to read; filthy, chilly, yet with six or eight people living there. Every one has a cold; and the oldest daughter, a nice girl of fourteen, is losing her eyes in the foul atmosphere. The old story: 'No work, no friends, rent to pay, and nothing to do.' The parents squalid, idle, intemperate, and shiftless. There they live, just picking up enough to keep life warm in them; groaning, and begging, and seeking work. There they live, breeding each day pestilence and disease, scattering abroad over the city seeds of fearful sickness—raising a brood of vagrants and harlots—retorting on society its neglect by cursing the bodies and souls of thousands whom they never knew, and who never saw them.
"Yet it is cheering—it cheered me even in that squalid hole—that the children are so much superior to their parents. It needs time for vice and beggary and filth to degrade childhood. God has given every fresh human soul something which rises above its surroundings, and which even want and vice do not wear away. For the old poor, for the sensual who have steeped themselves in crime, for the drunkard, the thief, the prostitute who have run a long course, let those heroically work who will. Yet, noble as is the effort, one's experience of human nature is obliged to confess, the fruits will be very few. The old heart of man is a hard thing to change. In any comprehensive view, the only hopeful reform through society must begin with childhood, basing itself on a change of circumstances and on religious influences."
The average expense of a school of this nature, with one hundred scholars and two salaried teachers, where a cheap meal is supplied, and garments and shoes are earned by the scholars, we reckon usually at $1,500, or at $15 per head annually for each scholar.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE GERMAN RAG-PICKERS.
Our next great effort was among the Germans. On the eastern side of the city is a vast population of German laborers, mechanics, and shop-keepers. Among them, also, are numbers of exceedingly poor people, who live by gathering rags and bones.
I used at that time to explore these singular settlements, filled with the poor peasantry of the "Fatherland," and being familiar with the German patois, I had many cheery conversations with these honest people, who had drifted into places so different from their mountain-homes. In fact, it used to convey to me a strange contrast, the dirty yards piled with bones and flaunting with rags, and the air smelling of carrion; while the accents reminded of the glaciers of the Bavarian Alps or the fresh breezes and wild scenes of the Harz. The poor people felt the contrast terribly, and their children most of all.
From ignorance of the language and the necessity of working at their street-trades, they did not attend our schools, and seldom entered a church. They were growing up without either religion or education. Yet they were a much more honest and hopeful class than the Irish. There seemed always remaining in them something of the good old German Biederkeit, or solidity. One could depend on the children if they were put in places of trust, and in school they seemed to grasp knowledge with much more tenacity and vigor. The young girls, however, coming from a similar low class were weaker in virtue than the Irish.
The number of the Germans in the poor quarters may be somewhat measured by the population of the Wards which they inhabited. The Eleventh Ward at that time (1854) was reckoned to contain 50,000 inhabitants; at present (1870) it contains 64,372, and the Sixteenth Ward, another strong German district, has 99,375.
The Association of ladies which we called together for labors among this population happened to be composed mainly of Unitarians, a religious body that has always felt a peculiar interest in the moral condition of our German poor. The moving spirit in the association was a lady of such singular grace and delicacy of character, that I hardly venture, even after these many years, to make public her name. She occupied then one of the foremost positions in New York society—a position accorded in part to her name, honored for intellectual services to the Republic, beyond almost any other in our history, but above all due to her own singular sweetness and dignity of manner and a very highly cultivated and strong intellect. Her power, whether with rich or poor, was her wonderful consideration for others, and her quick sympathy. The highest inspiration of Christian faith breathed through her life and animated her in laboring with these children of poverty. The same inspiration sustained her subsequently in a prolonged and terrible trial of months under a fearful disease, and made her death a sun-set of glory to all who knew her. Never did the faith in immortal union with God through Christ attain a more absolute certainty in any human being. Her death, even to many skeptics who were intimate with her, became a new and astonishing argument for Immortality.