THE NEW-YORK FIREMAN.
"Let him go—throw him out—you will all burn up in five minutes more—this old wooden house burns like tinder."
She looks behind her; the flame is sending serpent tongues under the door. Her dress upon a chair is on fire—now the bed. They must jump, naked too, down among those men, or die.
"Hold on! hold on! Way there—give way there. Hurrah, men! lively now!"
Oh, that was a sight for that mother and her two children. A ladder company thundered down the street with their cry of "Way there!" for they have caught the sight of a woman and children in distress; and oh! how they do press forward, shouting, "Way there! lively now! Hold on, we will save you!" How quick, after they reach the spot, a ladder is loosened and off the carriage, with one end on the ground and the other going up, up—"Up with her now!" and so they do. Before it has found a resting-place, a man, active as a cat, is halfway up. Now he is at the top; now—hurrah!—how the shouts rend the air, for he has the boy in one arm and the girl in the other, and tells the mother to follow. She hesitates. What for? The noble fireman sees at a glance, stops a moment, pulls off his coat and throws it to her—"now"—down they go—now they are safe. Safe with life—not a thing else on earth but her two fatherless children, her only covering a fireman's coat. Where is her husband now? Where he will never see them again; for while his attendant slept he tore the bandages from his wound, and then slept himself—a sleep that one voice alone will awaken. Judge him not harshly; he was the victim, not the criminal. He is dead now, tread lightly upon his grave.
Look to his wife and children. It is they who need your sympathy. Raised in the worst school on earth—the streets of this city, some of the Life Scenes of which I aim to depict—the boy has already learned to "prig;" and, so he shared the proceeds with his father—that father, or rather the monster who made him a devil, would encourage the boy to be a thief. What could the mother do to counteract such deleterious influence? All day she must stand at her corner, selling fruit, pea-nuts, and candy, to make bread to feed her else starving offspring, and to keep her husband out of the prison or alms-house.
You have already seen the effect of the street education upon Sally; the sight of her playmate, Julia Antrim, dressed in silks and laces, although borrowed—no, furnished, by "the woman," on hire, for a purpose more wicked than murder, for murder only kills the body—has already tempted her towards the same road—to that broad path to woe; not in the future, but here present with us every day; and she has already determined that she will follow it as soon as "she gets big enough."
The danger is still more imminent now. Houseless, naked, starving in the street, how shall she live? One step, one resolution, will take her to the clothes-lending harpy, who fattens upon the life-blood of young girls, whom she dooms to the fate of Ixion for the remainder of their lives; for her garments are the shirts of Nessus to all who wear them.