“Shoemaking.”
“Why did you leave Emmettsburg?”
“To get work.”
“Well, you had better go to the Mayor’s, at the corner of Fifth and Chestnut Streets, and tell him you have no food, no home and no work.”
Off he went, and I followed by another route, and reached one door of the office, just as he entered at the other. Unfortunately the Mayor was at dinner, and I could only tell my story to the officer in attendance.
What shall be done with such a man? I asked.
“We can only send him down to Moyamensing for thirty days, or to Blockley,” was the reply.
Is that the only alternative—the prison, or the poor house, the latter with 2,700 inmates, and the former so overstocked as to make it a positive nuisance? Is it really so? There is work for one hundred men at this moment, in removing ice from the gutters, making the side walks passable, and the streets decent, and yet this able bodied vagrant must be imposed upon the tax-paying public as a prisoner or a pauper!
As we left the office, we saw the Emmettsburg shoemaker ignobly introduced to the ward room. I hope it will not be said that this is a case not likely to occur often, for in that event, I shall feel obliged to relate half a dozen other instances which have occurred within my own observation, and the details of which are any thing but agreeable.