Generally, the girls married mechanics and people above their rank of life. Some became Protestants; those who married Catholics were never bigoted. A number went to the West, and have done well there.
Mrs. Hurley reckons over at least two thousand different girls who have been in this school and under its influence, since she has been there during the past eighteen years. The condition of all these we know probably pretty well. We count but five who have become drunkards, prostitutes, or criminals! Such a wonderful result can be shown by hardly any preventive efforts in the world. Yet, there were certain cases which we used to call
"OUR FAILURES."
There was the D. family—they lived on the lucrative spoils of their infant, who sold toilet-covers to compassionate ladies. This little Julia was an imp of deceit and mischief She had, fortunately for her, a worn, sad face, and a capacity and imagination for lying unequaled at her years. With inarticulate sobs, and the tears coursing down her thin cheeks, she told of her dying mother and her labors to get her bread; or, again, she was an orphan supporting herself and her deformed little brother; or her disabled father depended on her feeble efforts for his slender support. The addresses she gave of her house were always wrong; and so, year by year, she gathered in a plenteous harvest from the pity of the ladies.
At home, a little band of able-bodied, slatternly sisters were living mainly on the money thus begged. They naturally became each day more lazy and dissolute; and little Julia more bold and brazen-faced. We tried to bribe the young beggar to go to school, we paid her rent, we offered the sisters work, we remonstrated and threatened, we even set the police on her track, but nothing could check or turn her; she eluded the police as easily as she did the ladies. If she came to school, she stayed but a day; all effort failed against the ingrained slovenliness and vagrancy of the family; day by day they sank; one daughter was seduced, and to their number was now added an illegitimate child. They grew dirtier and more miserable; and here, years ago, we left them. No doubt, Julia is still pursuing her profitable vocation from house to house, and the girls are in yet lower depths.
A STREET-CHILD. (FROM OUR JOURNAL.)
"Some ten years ago, I made many efforts to save a little homeless girl, who was floating about the quarter near East Thirty-second Street. Her drunken mother had thrown her out of doors, and she used to sleep under stairways or in deserted cellars, and was a most wretched, half-starved little creature. I talked with her often, but could not induce her to go to school, or to seek a home in the country. She grew up steadily vagrant. At length we succeeded in getting her away to the family of an excellent lady in Buffalo. There she speedily gave up her roving habits, became neat and orderly under the influence of the lady, attended church and Sabbath School, and altogether seemed quite a changed child. Unfortunately, the lady was obliged to move to this city, and instead of placing the little girl in another family in the country, she brought her with her to New York, and, no longer having room for her in her house, let her go to her old associates. In a few weeks, the nice, tidy little girl began to look like the idle and vagrant young girls who were her companions. She became slatternly in her habits, and instead of seeking a place in some family, she joined a company of poor working-girls, who earned their living by manufacturing children's torpedoes. She lodged in the crowded tenement-houses, and gradually fell into all their low associations. The next I knew of her, I heard that she had been seduced under a promise of marriage, and that she was about to be a mother. Again I knew of her, with her unfortunate little babe, driven about from one low lodging-house to another, dependent upon charity for support. Finally, the child was adopted by the parents of her seducer, and she was left free again. Though in extreme destitution, she would not take a situation away from the city. She resumed her work at torpedoes, and lived about in the tenement-houses, a poor, bedraggled-looking creature. Again, after some time, I heard of her as having married a low fellow in that district. She had only been married a few days when her husband abandoned her, and never returned to her. She now hangs about the low lodging-houses between First and Second Avenues, in East Thirty-first and Thirty-second Streets, a forlorn-looking, slovenly woman, who will almost certainly end in the lowest vice and penury."
Thus far in the Journal. Our constant pursuit of this girl did tend, I think, to keep her from utter ruin.
She fell no lower; and subsequently connected herself with one of the charitable institutions, where she is living a virtuous life.