Witch Winnie: The Story of a "King's Daughter"

by Elizabeth W. Champney

"Do you mean to say that you and your husband are leaving New York for the West together?"

"Ya. I left him, and he say, 'Barbara, you has right; I leaf myself, too.' But I cannot trust him alretty mit de chillern. I leaf dem one six month, to try what come of it all."

"I hope your husband has indeed left his worst self behind him," said Emma Jane; and on suitable security being provided, the Rumple children were admitted.

In almost all cases it was not the desperately and hopelessly pauperized and vicious—who were provided for by reformatories and the city charities—whom they helped, but the class just above them, who were slipping over the brink, and would surely have fallen and contributed to swell the dangerous classes, if not reached by this timely assistance.

"Prevention is better than cure," and it was the hope of the "King's Daughters" to rescue the innocent children of decent and struggling parents before they should need reformation.

Rosaria Ricos, the Cuban heiress, endowed a bed to be used for some child whose parents could do nothing whatever toward its support. She wished to have more free beds, but Miss Prillwitz showed her how much better it was for the parents to do something, however little it might be, for their children, and not be pauperized by having every feeling of independence and ability to care for their own taken from them. Exceptional circumstances might arise, when a mother out of employment, could wisely be helped over a great exigency, but she advised that Miss Ricos's "Emergency Bed" be given for short periods only. It was first occupied by Lovell Trimble, familiarly, but most inappropriately, nicknamed by the other children, Lovey Dimple. He was a homely, unprepossessing boy, with a pug nose and a disproportionately large head. His father was the unsuccessful inventor of Rickett's Court, with whom we are already acquainted. He spent all his former earnings in securing patents for various great inventions which were to make all their fortunes. His mother had been a shop-girl in a large dry-goods store, and had supported the family until long-continued standing had sent her to the hospital. Lovey had tried to take her place in supporting his father by wheeling "the machine" of a hot-flap-jack seller, while the flap-jack man devoted his attention to frying the cakes, flipping them on to a plate, and serving them up with a dab of butter and a lake of molasses. They did their best business winter nights after the theatres were out—sheltered from the snow by an awning or a convenient door-way, and they knew which places of amusement were out first, and would race at ambulance speed from Harrigan and Hart's to the Bowery, to secure the custom of each. Lovey liked the business, for, besides the pay, after the day's trade was over the flap-jack man let him eat whatever was left, for the batter would not keep, and he had always a few cakes to carry home to his father of the full brain and empty stomach.

But one night a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, who had had his eye on the flap-jack man as employing too young a child for labor involving so much privation, descended upon the cart with a policeman; and the flap-jack man having discreetly absconded, they arrested Lovey in default of his employer. Miss Prillwitz appeared in court at Jim's request, for in some way Jim had heard of his friend's apprehension, and having ascertained that Mr. Trimble had gone upon a spree, she rashly, but not unnaturally, decided that nothing was to be expected from such a father, and next paid a visit to Mrs. Trimble, at the hospital. Learning there that there was a prospect of her cure, she offered Lovey the hospitality of the Emergency Bed until his mother should be able to work once more. This case established relations between the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the new Home; and a little girl—who had been forced to sell lead-pencils on the street at night by a drunken mother, though her father was a brakeman, who could well afford to support her—was committed to the Home through the agency of the Society; and the father, on being notified, approved the action, and paid her board regularly.

One desirable result of the Home was its effect on Emma Jane's character. From being, as she had truly said of herself, an unlovely and unloving girl who disliked children, her nature sweetened by contact with them; and taking them one by one into her heart, it broadened and softened, till an expression which was almost madonna-like trembled in a face which had been grim and repellent. Lovey Dimple was the first to scale the fortress of Emma Jane's affections. He inherited his father's aptitude for mechanics. Among the old books and papers contributed to the Home were, strangely enough, some bound volumes of the Scientific American and a few stray Patent Office reports, and over these he pored until his head seemed full of revolving cog-wheels and pulleys, and pistons, and his heart beat like a stationary engine. He was certain that he would be an inventor some day, like Ericsson or Edison; indeed, he was an inventor already, for had he not constructed unnumbered mill-wheels and windmills, weathercocks and whirligigs, besides taking to pieces the clock (which he could not get together again), and adapting his mother's sewing-machine to fret-saw purposes? He had studied every machine which he had seen in the stores, from the corn-sheller to the great patent mower, and believed that he understood the action of each. "Patent" was a word that stirred his soul, though he had but a dim conception of its meaning. It was something, his father had said, that the Government would give him if he invented a really useful, labor-saving machine, one which would "supply a felt want."

Lovey knew what a felt hat was, but it was several days before he really knew what his father meant by a felt want. As soon as he had grasped the idea he began in earnest. "Mother Halsey," he asked, "what part of your work bothers you most?"

Mrs. Halsey looked hot and flustered. Half an hour before this she had put her room and the nursery in order, had dressed the twenty-five children; from combing their hair and scrubbing the little ones, and introducing them into each separate garment, to merely tying apron-strings and buttoning the "behind buttons" of the older ones, and giving them a final dress review before starting them to the public school.