Mrs. Bangs thought it more suitable and economical to have a governess for her daughters, so she hired a decent young person, who was an excellent needle woman, and who could write and cipher admirably. Reading and spelling, Mrs. Bangs said, seemed to come “by nature” with the poor, dear, chubby, little things; how else could they learn, for poor Hannah French was as deaf as a post. So eternally busy were they all from morning till ten at night, that Robina, a pretty, delicate girl, with a good understanding, and very excitable, had never found time to cultivate the acquaintance of any of the young girls of her own age, although in the abstract there was no unwillingness to it. Neither her father nor mother would have hindered her, but sisters and companions came so fast at home, and that home was made so happy by her active, well-principled mother, that there was no craving for out-door society.
Mrs. Bangs was a pious and benevolent woman too, and after going through all her home duties she thought of the poor, and three days she set apart in every month to sew for them. All the children, down to the baker’s dozen, felt this as part of their duty, and they no more thought it possible to break through the rule than not to eat when they were hungry. It was a want which they sought to attain like any other want or comfort.
Mrs. Bangs never staid to inquire whether the poor wretches were worthy of her attentions—“Let that alone,” she would say, “‘tis no concern of ours.” She reverently left it to a higher power to judge of their worthiness. All she had to do was to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, choosing old age and infancy whenever she could, for the objects of her bounty. The children thus brought up, I should like to know,—as they did their own clear-starching, knitted stockings for their father, grandfather, and three aged uncles, made their own linen and worked all the baby caps, as well as sewed for the poor—I should like to know what time they had to gossip or make acquaintances, excepting with the poor?
They had no time—even on Sunday their faces were not familiar to the congregation, for a cottage bonnet and a veil kept them from gazing about; so the conversation, when they returned, was not about the dress or spiteful looks of this person or that. If by accident an observation was made, indiscreetly, the mother would stop them immediately by her eternal saying—“Let that alone, ‘tis no concern of ours.”
She kept her accounts in excellent order, initiating her children early in the mysteries of bank stock operations; for when it came to be explained to them in the mother’s simple way, the children understood it as well as A, B, C. It is the hard words, and the mystification, and solemn nonsense kept up about it that keeps women so ignorant and helpless in these matters, and makes them so entirely dependent on men, who nineteen times out of twenty cheat them when they become widows.
As their wealth increased, so were her benevolent feelings excited, and Mr. Bangs was no hinderance, for he had no love of hoarding now that there were no boys to inherit his property. “Never mind that, Christopher,” she would say, when this sore subject was touched upon, “let that alone, ‘tis no concern of ours; but I am of opinion that every man should make a will, and here is one that I drew up, which I wish you to sign.” “I’ll tell you what it is, Molly Bangs,” said he, on reading the will, “I’ll do none of this. I’ve made my will already, and if you outlive me then all belongs to you; but if you die first, then I mean to marry again, because the chance is that I may have sons; for I tell you that such secrets as I have to disclose about my business ought not to die with a man.”
Mrs. Bangs knew her husband’s obstinacy too well to make further words about the matter, so she set herself to work to remedy the evil. Instead of wanting to build a hospital or an asylum for the poor and destitute, she built a row of houses in one of the back streets of her valuable lot of ground, for poor widows with young children, and she studied their comfort in every thing. Each division, for the row was uniform and fire-proof, consisted of four rooms, two below, and two above. The sitting room and bed-rooms were warmed by means of heated air from a furnace in the kitchen, which was so constructed that the cooking was done at the same fire. Even the stove pipe which was carried up to let off the gas and smoke, threw all the external heat into the room above, so that all was kept warm by one fire. The cistern of rain water was close to the kitchen, and the water was drawn within by means of Hale’s rotary pump. Drinking-water was likewise introduced by a pipe, and a drain carried off all the slops from the house. She could not bear to think that poor women should have to put up with so many inconveniences, when it cost so little to make them comfortable.
When a very rich man has a few lots in an out of the way place, he builds a row of houses for poor people and gets a good rent for them—enjoining it on his agent not to let a poor widow have any one of them; because, if she should be unable to pay her rent, he would be ashamed to sell her little furniture. His houses are miserably built, generally one brick thick, and with only one coat of plaster on the walls; no crane in the kitchen, no cistern, no well, no comfort of any kind. The poor tenants might think themselves well off with having the shell to cover them.
Mrs. Bangs knew that the life to come was a long one—to last for ever; so she thought it was not worth while to hoard up money for the very short time she had to live here. She had a great love of comfort herself, and so had all her children; and they could not bear to set a poor widow in an empty house, without even a closet to put her clothes in. So she had closets made between the two bed rooms, and likewise between the parlour and kitchen. And she gave them a chance of helping themselves still further by having a good deep, dry cellar, where they could keep their half barrel of fish, and their little joints of meat, and small pots of butter from the heats of summer, and their vegetables from the frosts of winter, and why coal and wood should be kept out of doors in winter was more than she could tell. It was easy to build a cellar, she thought, and so the cellars were made. “It seems to me,” she continued to say, “that men have no idea of comfort themselves, or they would not grudge it to their poor tenants; women understand these matters better, and as God has endowed them with greater sensibilities than the other sex, why it is incumbent on them to show their grateful sense of this partiality in their favour; and how can we show it but by attending to those little things which make up, by their great number, all the happiness of life? Men never view the subject in this light, but let that alone, ‘tis no concern of ours.”
The thirty houses, with the plainest furniture that could be bought, cost exactly thirty thousand dollars—the precise sum she intended to appropriate to them. Fuel and repairs and taxes cost her twelve hundred a year; this with the interest on the thirty thousand, came to three thousand dollars a year. With an income of more than thirty thousand, and the prospect of a great rise in the value of her lots of ground, what was the annual loss of three thousand dollars?