“Yes, I hear some one singing; do I not?”
“You do; that is Bonny Betty, as the ladies call her. She is a very large, bony woman, full six feet high, and well looking too. She works from morning till night, and has contrived to maintain herself and six children without the help of a human being, and not one child to do a turn for her, in the way of earning money, I mean. Her husband died a drunkard; she buried him three years ago, and from that hour she seemed to alter her very nature. Before that, she used to go about the country to beg, carrying all the children with her; and, when far away from home, would sleep in outhouses and barns. With the little money she gathered in this way, she bought wood and other necessaries for the winter, mending up the rags she had begged, and preparing for a traipse in the summer, may be with an additional child on her arm. As soon as Christie Kelley died, she bought a broom, the first ever seen in her house, swept the two rooms of her shanty clean,—pulled out an old leather glove from her huge pocket, and counted out fifty dollars in notes and silver. ‘Now, Mrs. M’Curdy,’ said she, ‘you’re a sensible woman; sit down by me and tell me how I had best lay out all this money. I kept it unknown to poor Christie, and a little more too—how else could he have been buried so decently?’ In a little time, sir, with her prudence in laying out this money, her cabin got to look as well as mine, barring that six ailing children will make a litter and some noise.”
“How does she maintain herself, if work is so scarce, and what is the matter with her children?”
“How does she maintain herself? why, in the strangest way you ever heard of. She does every thing and any thing. In the morning she finds out which of the children are likeliest to be the sickest through the day; these she carries with her, for she is a powerful, strong woman; and into a house she goes, seats the children in an obscure corner, and falls to work—nothing comes amiss. If it is washing day, she is up to her elbows in the suds before the lady of the house is up, and nothing but a constable will force her out till she has done two women’s work, has eaten three hearty meals, and fed the ailing children with such little scraps as their feeble health requires. She then gathers up the children, and, with a basket added to her load, off she goes to feed those at home with the savoury scraps in her basket. When she forces her way into a house she takes no money, contenting herself with receiving broken meat for her pay, and if there is more than enough for the family, she takes it in to Biddy Brady, or to one poor body or other. But this vagrant disposition is fast leaving her, for she is so useful and so cheerful that there are very few families that can do without her. She scents a dinner or a tea party at a great distance, and she gets there in the nick of time to be of service. She makes yeast, soap, candles, bread,—whitewashes, takes out grease and stains, paints rooms, mends broken windows and china,—cuts better cold slaw, as the Dutch call it, finer and quicker than any one,—makes sourcrout, pickles and preserves,—knows how to put up shad and smoke herrings; in short, in her ramblings she watched the different ways of doing things, and now she sets up for herself. You cannot think what a really useful woman Bonny Betty is; it is a pity that the children are so sickly.”
“Has she a doctor?—does she ever consult a doctor?”
“A doctor! why they are all more or less deformed. Ben, the eldest, has a great wen over his left eye which has nearly destroyed his sight; Kate, the next, has a broken back, and is lame; Jemmy is one sore from head to foot, and has been in that way for four years; Bob is a thin, sickly boy, that has fainty turns, and is beginning to lose his hearing; Susy is deaf and dumb; and little Christie, only four years old, has the dropsy.”
“Good heavens! and this woman is cheerful, and maintains them all with the labour of her own hands?”
“Yes, and is laying up money. She has nearly a hundred dollars in the Savings Fund; her children are well clothed for poor people’s children, and well fed; she has two pigs in the pen; and she and I are the only persons in the neighbourhood that keep a cow. She has a fresh cow in the fall and I in the spring; so we both do well by them. I wish she had a better shanty.”
“Well, I shall make acquaintance with Bonny Betty; who comes next?”
“Sammy Oram is the sixth; he is a shoemaker, a poor, do-little kind of man, with five boys; he is a widower. Three of his boys work at times in the cotton factory and at times in the paper mill; but Sammy talks of going to Philadelphia, and so get rid of them all at once; for he calls his boys orphans, and he thinks as they were all born there, (for he only came here about five years ago,) he can get them in the Girard College. I wish he may, I am sure. Next to him lives an old man with one leg. He was once a good gardener, they say, but it is many years since he had to quit the trade owing to a white swelling which finally caused him to lose his leg. He lives alone, and maintains himself by making mats and brooms and such things; he is a very honest, sober man, and would make a good overseer, or some such thing, if any body knew his worth; but he is shy and melancholy like for an Irishman, and we often think he suffers in winter for comforts; but he never complains, and if people never complain, you know, why no one will thrust kindness on them.”