Sullivan says I’m a model. I don’t give her the least bit of trouble, and she wouldn’t part with me for anything. You ought to have been here just now, and seen little Vulfi of the “Melodeon.” She makes $100 a night, and yet she doesn’t dress any more stylishly than Mrs. Sullivan; and she never bought a jewel in her life. She supports a mother, and sends a brother to college in Florence. You people think we are fast. That’s all nonsense. It is only the little dancers, la canaille, who can afford to be dissipated. I can’t, I know that. I’m too tired after the theatre to think of going out on a spree, as they call it. Besides, it doesn’t do for a dancer to be too cheap. It hurts her business.’
“‘Devereux’s nice, isn’t she?’ said Miss Bell. ‘She’s very good, and she’s plucky. A fellow once followed her home from rehearsal, chirping to her all the way. She said nothing, but went right on into the livery stable next door. The fellow went in after her, and she snatched a carriage whip out of the office, and, oh my! didn’t she thrash him? Nobody interfered, and she whipped him till her arm ached. Ever since then she’s been receiving dreadful letters, and so has Mrs. Sullivan. She can’t find out who sends them, and she’s never seen the fellow again.’”
LXXVII. THE POOR OF NEW YORK.
I. THE DESERVING POOR.
Poverty is a terrible misfortune in any city. In New York it is frequently regarded as a crime. But whether the one or the other, it assumes here proportions which it does not reach in other American communities. The city is overrun with those who are classed as paupers, and in spite of the great efforts made to relieve them, their suffering is very great.
The deserving poor are numerous. They have been brought to their sad condition by misfortune. A laboring man may die and leave a widow with a number of small children dependent on her exertions. The lot of such is very hard. Sickness may strike down a father or mother, and thus deprive the remaining members of a family of their accustomed support, or men and women may be thrown out of work suddenly, or may be unable to procure employment. Again, a man may bring himself and his family to want by drunkenness. If the children are too young to earn their bread, the support of the family falls upon the wife. Whatever may be the cause of the misfortune, the lot of the poor in New York is very hard. Their homes are the most wretched tenement houses, and they are compelled to dwell among the most abandoned and criminal part of the population. No wonder poverty is so much dreaded here. The poor man has little, if any, chance of bettering his condition, and he is gradually forced down lower and lower in the scale of misery, until death steps in to relieve him, or he takes refuge in suicide.
The Missionaries are constant in their labors among the poor. They shrink from no work, are deterred by no danger, but carry their spiritual and temporal relief into places from which the dainty pastors of fashionable churches shrink with disgust. They not only preach the Gospel to the poor, who would never hear it but for them, but they watch by the bed-sides of the sick and the dying, administer the last rites of religion to the believing pauper or the penitent criminal, and offer to the Great Judge the only appeal for mercy that is ever made in behalf of many a soul that dies in its sins. There is many a wretched home into which these men have carried the only joy that has ever entered its doors. Nor are they all men, for many of the most effective Missionaries are gentle and daintily nurtured women. A part of the Missionary’s work is to distribute Bibles, tracts, and simple religious instruction. These are simple little documents, but they do a deal of good. They have reformed drunkards, converted the irreligious, shut the mouth of the swearer, and have brought peace to more than one heart. The work is done so silently and unpretendingly that few but those engaged in it know how great are its effects. They are encouraged by the evidences which they have, and continue their work gladly.
Thanks to the Missionaries, many of the deserving poor have been brought under the constant care of the Mission Establishments, from which they receive the assistance they need. Yet there are many who cannot be reached, or at least cannot be aided effectively. The officers of the Howard Mission relate many touching incidents of the suffering that has come under their notice.