Ninety-One's features were harsh and scarred, but now they quivered with an almost child-like emotion. With his brawny hand he pointed to the bodies of the dead,—
"Thar's eight dollars worth o' yer notes, Isr'el," he said. "Thar's Chow Bank, Muddy Run, an' Tarrapin Holler! Look at 'em! Don't you think that some day God Almighty will ax you to change them notes?"
And Israel shrank back appalled from the bed. Ninety-One clutched his wrist with a firmer grasp; the eleven gathered closely in his rear, their ominous murmur growing more distinct; and the light, held in the convict's hand, shed its calm rays over the faces of the dead family.
This death-scene in the artist's home, calls up certain thoughts.
Poverty! Did you ever think of the full meaning of that word? The curse of poverty is the cowardice which it breeds, cowardice of body and soul. Many a man who would in full possession of his faculties, pour out his life-blood for a friend, or even for a stranger, will, when it becomes a contest for a crust of bread,—for the last means of a bare subsistence,—steal that crust from the very lips of his starving friend, and would, were it possible, drain the last life-drop in the veins of another, in order to keep life in his own wretched carcass. The savage, starving in the snow, in the center of his desolate prairie, knows nothing of the poverty of the civilized savage, much less of that poverty, which takes the man or woman of refined education, and kills every noble faculty of the soul, before it does its last work on the body. Poverty in the city, is not mere want of bread, but it is the lack of the means to supply innumerable wants, created by civilization,—and that lack is slow moral and physical death. Talk of the bravery of the hero, who, on the battle-field stands up to be shot at, with the chance of glory, on the one hand, and a quick death on the other! How will his heroism compare with that brave man, who in the large city, year after year, and day by day, expends the very life-strings of his soul, in battling against the fangs of want, in keeping some roof-shelter over his wife and children, or those who are as dependent upon him as wife and children? Proud lady, sitting on your sofa, in your luxurious parlor, you regard with a quiet sneer, that paragraph in the paper (you hold it in your hand), which tells how a virtuous girl, sold her person into the grasp of wealthy lust for—bread! You sneer,—virtue, refined education, beauty, innocence, chastity, all gone to the devil for a—bit of bread! Sneer on! but were you to try the experiment of living two days without—not your carriage and opera-box,—but without bread or fire in the dead of winter, working meanwhile at your needle, with half-frozen fingers for just sixteen pennies per day, you would, I am afraid, think differently of the matter. Instead of two days, read two years, and let your trial be one of perpetual work and want, that never for a moment cease to bite,—I am afraid, beautiful one, were this your case, you would sometimes find yourself thinking of a comfortable life, and a bed of down, purchased by the sale of your body, and the damnation of your soul. And you, friend, now from the quiet of some country village, railing bravely against southern slavery, and finding no word bitter enough to express your hatred of the slave market, in which black men and black women are sold—just look a moment from the window of your quiet home, and behold yonder huge building, blazing out upon the night from its hundred windows. That is a factory. Yes. Have you no pity for the white men, (nearer to you in equality of organization certainly than black men,) who are chained in hopeless slavery, to the iron wheels of yonder factory's machinery? Have you no thought of the white woman, (lovelier to look upon certainly than black women, and in color, in organization, in education resembling very much your own wife, sister, mother,) who very often are driven by want, from yonder factory to the grave, or to the—brothels of New York? You mourn over black children, sold at the slave block,—have you no tear for white children, who in yonder factory, are deprived of education, converted into mere working machines (without one tithe of the food and comfort of the black slave), and transformed into precocious old men and women, before they have ever felt one free pulse of childhood?
Ah! this enterprise which forms the impulse and the motto of modern civilization, will doubtless in the future ripen into good for all men,—for there is a God,—but the path of its present progress, is littered with human skulls. It weaves, it spins, it builds, it spreads forth on all sides its iron arms,—and it has a good capital,—the blood of human hearts. Labor-saving machinery, (the most awful feature of modern civilization,) will, in the future, when no longer monopolized by the few, do the greater portion of the physical work of the world, and bless the entire race of man,—but until that future arrives, labor-saving machinery will send more millions down to death, than any three centuries of battle-fields, that ever cursed the earth. Yes, modern civilization, is very much like the locomotive, rolling along an iron track, at sixty miles per hour, with hot coals at its heart, and a cloud of smoke and flame above it. Look at it, as it thunders on! What a magnificent impersonation of power; of brute force chained by the mind of man! All true,—but woe, woe to the weak or helpless, who linger on its iron track! and woe to the weak, the crippled, or the poor, whom the locomotive of modern civilization finds lingering in its way. Why should it care? It has no heart. Its work is to move onward, and to cut down all, whom poverty and misfortune have left in its path.
There is one phase of poverty which hath no parallel in its unspeakable bitterness. A man of genius with a good heart, and something of the all-overarching spirit of Christ in him, looks around the world, sees the vast sum of human misery, and feels like this, 'With but a moderate portion of money, what good might not be accomplished!' and yet that little sum is as much beyond him,—as far beyond his grasp, as the planet Jupiter.
That forth from the womb of the present chaos, a nobler era will be born, no one can doubt, who feels the force of these four words, 'there is a God.' And that the present age with its deification of the money power, is one of the basest the world ever saw, cannot be disproved, although it may be bitterly denied. There is something pitiful in the thought that a world once deemed worthy of the tread of Satan, is now become the crawling ground of Mammon.