Tell you a story, Harry? Do you like to hear about poor people? Well, jump up into my lap. So;—now look straight into my eyes.
Last night I went to see some poor Italian emigrants. I threaded my way through dirty streets and alleys, and up rickety old staircases, where it was so dark that I had to feel my way, and where I coughed and choked at every step, with the tobacco smoke and bad air.
At last I opened the door of a small room, lighted with one window, where were a dozen persons—men, women and children. Some were seated on straw beds, which were lying upon the floor; some were sitting upon old boxes, and others were looking out the window (as if bewildered) upon the strange scenes in the street below.
Crouched upon the hearth, was a very old woman, with thin, gray locks, toothless gums, and bare bosom. She was stretching out her skinny hands over a few shavings that she had kindled into a blaze; while a little baby lay in a shawl beside her, rubbing its eyes, and crying at the smoke that was every instant puffed into its little face. On the opposite side of the hearth, was a little boy and girl, quite naked to the waist from whence hung a little dirty tunic to their bare knees. A tin pan of raw potatoes lay between them, which they were slicing off with a great knife, and greedily devouring, as if they were half-starved.
Harry, what do you think of that? How should you relish a raw potato for supper? How should you like to come from a warm, sunny country, into a cold, chilly climate, and be obliged to go half-naked because you had no money to buy clothes? How should you like not to be able to understand a word anybody there said to you, or not to be able to make them understand you? How should you like to have your mother, or your father, go wandering round, day after day, making signs to people, to try to get employment, and have to keep giving away one article of their poor clothing after another for a loaf of bread? How should you like to be turned out (even of that miserable room) into the street, some stormy night, by a cruel landlord? How should you like to see your mother sit down on a door step, in the dark, dark night, and droop her weary head upon her bosom and die?
Oh, Harry! all that had happened to the poor little boy and girl who were eating raw potatoes at the hearth. They were poor little orphans, and that old woman was their grandmother. They had all wandered about, from place to place, ever since they left the ship that brought them out.
They were pretty children, with great dark eyes, and curly hair, and such a bright smile when we spoke kindly to them. Their grandmother was all they had now to love; and she, poor woman, couldn't live long to take care of them, for the cold, and exposure, and anxiety, had almost killed her, too. So, she felt very anxious about what would become of little Pietro and Annita, when she was dead; and she kept patting them on the head, as if she was determined to make them as happy as possible while she lived.
Well, do you know, Harry, it struck me that Mrs. ——, who lives in New-York, might like to adopt the little orphans. She has no children of her own, and she loves children. That's why I took her with me to see the poor emigrants last night.
How she did cry when she saw the poor things eating raw potatoes! She turned round to me, and said, "Fanny, I must have those children. I'll take them right home, and I'll ——" then she couldn't stop to tell me the rest, but ran up to the grandmother, and asked her, in Italian, if she might not have Pietro and Annita.