There is one thing which strikes me as very affecting in the condition of any child. It is when that condition is necessarily a melancholy one—when the circumstances which hem it around cast over the surface of that young life an abiding gloom. A melancholy child! What an anomaly among the harmonies of the universe; something as incongruous as a bird drooping in a cage, or a flower in a sepulchre. The musical laughter muffled and broken; the spontaneous smile transformed to a sad suspicion; and the austerities of mature life, the fearful speculation, and forecast of evil, fixed and frozen on a boy's face! And then the sorrow of a child is so absorbing—for he lives only in the present. In the afflictions which fall upon him, man has the aid of reason and faith—he looks beyond the present issue, he detects the significance of his calamity, and strengthened thus a brave heart can vanquish any sorrow. But, as Richter beautifully says—"the little cradle, or bed-canopy of the child, is easier darkened than the starry heaven of man." Surely, then, it is a blessed thing to contribute aught that will lighten this gloom, and place the child in natural conditions.
But there is one phase of this subject which, in its appeal to us, is more eloquent than all the rest. It is where there are children who stand not merely in the intrinsic claim of their childhood; or in their touching sadness; or pushing their energies into vice and crime; but nobly struggling against the tide of evil—struggling to bear up in their lot—enduring and achieving for the sake of those who, young as these children are, are dependent on them. If I had time, I think I could write a "Martyrology;" not following the track of famous men, whose faces look out upon us from the brutal amphitheatre and from the fire with a halo of glory around them, and whom we behold, by the vision of faith, with their gory robes transfigured to celestial whiteness, waving palms in their hands; but tracing out incidents in the lives of some of the children here in our city—not dead, but living martyrs! O! I think I could write such a Martyrology, with blood and tears, over many a gloomy threshold, on the walls of many a desolate room; and let future generations come and read it—a fearful record of human suffering—a sweet memorial of human virtue—when many of these old woes, we trust, shall have passed away for ever.
Permit me, in closing, to present two or three incidents illustrative of this heroism and sacrifice among the Children of the Poor.
Take, for instance, the account of a writer who tells us that in the street he "met a little girl, very poor, but with such a sweet sad expression," adds he, "that I involuntarily stopped and spoke to her. She answered my questions very clearly, but the heavy, sad look never left her eyes a moment. She had no father or mother. She took care of the children herself; she was only thirteen; she sewed on check shirts, and made a living for them." He went to see her. "It is a low, damp basement her home. She lives there with the three little children, whom she supports, and the elder sick brother, who sometimes picks up a trifle. She had been washing for herself and little ones. 'She almost thought that she could take in washing now,' and the little ones with their knees to their mouths crouched up before the stove, looked as if there could not be a doubt of sister's doing anything she tried. 'Well, Annie, how do you make a living now?' 'I sew on the check shirts, sir, and the flannel shirts; I get five cents for the checks, and nine cents for the others; but just now they wont let me have the flannel, because I can't deposit two dollars.' 'It must be very hard work?' 'O! I don't mind, sir; but to-day the visitors came, and said we'd better go to the poor-house, and I said I couldn't like to leave these little ones yet; and I thought if I only had candles, I could sit up till ten or eleven, and make the shirts.' ... She had learned everything she knew at the Industrial School.... She never went to church, for she had no clothes, but she could read and write.... 'It was very damp there,' she said, 'and then it was so cold nights.'"
I will, in the next place, introduce you to a garret-room, six feet by ten. The occupants are a poor mother and her son. The mother works at making shirts with collars and stitched bosoms, at six shillings and sixpence per dozen, for a man who pays half in merchandise, and who, when she is starving for bread, puts her off with calico at a shilling a yard that is not worth more than fourpence! But he is not the martyr in the case. When the visitor entered, her son George, about twelve years old, "was just coming in for dinner, pale and apparently exhausted by the effort of climbing the stairs, and sank down upon a rough plank bench near the door." He worked in a glass-factory, earning a bare subsistence. "He is a little old man at twelve," says the narrator, "the paleness of his sunken cheeks was relieved by the hectic flush; his hollow dry eye was moistened by an occasional tear; and his thin white lip quivered as he told me his simple story; how he was braving hunger and death—for he cannot live long—to help his mother pay the rent and buy her bread. 'Half-past ten at night is early for him to return,' said the mother; 'sometimes it is half-past eleven and I am sitting up for him.' Sometimes, in the morning, she finds him awake, 'but he don't want to get up, and he puts his hands on his sides and says, 'Mother, it hurts me here when I breathe.' I can work, and I do work,' adds she, 'all the time—but I can't make as much as my little boy.'"
One more account. It is of a beggar-girl who "lives," as the narrative goes on to say, "in a rear building where full daylight never shines—in a cellar-room where pure dry air is never breathed. A quick gentle girl of twelve years, she speaks to the visitor as he enters—'Mother does not see you, sir, because she's blind.' The mother was an old woman of sixty-five or seventy years, with six or seven others seated around. 'But you told me you and your mother and little sister lived by yourselves.' 'Yes, sir—here it is;'" and at the end of the passage the visitor discovers a narrow place, about five feet by three. The bed was rolled up in one corner, and nearly filled the room. "'But where is your stove?' 'We have none, sir. The people in the next room are very kind to mother, and let her come in there to warm—because, you know, I get half the coal.' 'But where do you cook your food?' 'We never cook any, sir; it is already cooked. I go early in the morning to get coal and chips for the fire, and I must have two baskets of coal and wood to kindle with by noon. That's mother's half. Then when the people have eaten dinner, I go round to get the bits they leave. I can get two baskets of coal every day now; but when it gets cold, and we must have a great deal, it is hard for me to find any—there's so many poor chaps to pick it. Sometimes the ladies speak cross to me, and shut the door hard at me, and sometimes the gentlemen slap me in the face, and kick my basket, and then I come home, and mother says not to cry, for may be I'll do better to-morrow. Sometimes I get my basket almost full, and then put it by for to-morrow; and then, if next day we have enough, I take this to a poor woman next door. Sometimes I get only a few bits in my basket for all day, and may be the next day. And then I fast, because, you know, mother is sick and weakly, and can't be able to fast like me.'"
These my friends, are some of the "short and simple annals of the poor." But those of whom Gray spoke rest peacefully in the "country churchyard;" their spirits are in heaven, and their history is embalmed in his own immortal Elegy. But these records are of those who yet live and suffer—"Martyrs without the palm."
And could I summon them here to-night, and would the Master but enter as when upon earth, surely he would look upon them in tender pity; would bless them; would take in his arms those whom the world has cast aside and overlooked. Nay, perhaps he would transfigure their actuality into their possibility, and we might see "the angels in their faces," pleading with us before the Father's throne!