"Surely, madam, we cannot tell. Perhaps you can, or your husband, where is he?"
If a dog were thrown among the whelps in a wolf's lair, it would not arouse the dam quicker than these words did this human she-wolf. She sprang towards us, foaming with rage. A stout cane in my strong right hand caught her eye, and she stood at bay.
"What was she so mad at you and your companion for? Did she know either of you?"
"She knew us by sight, or rather she knew him as one of the active helpers of the Missionary, Mr. Pease, the House of Industry, and the Five Points Mission. What more should she know to hate us? She knew we were not of her faith; that we believed not in the efficacy of holy water and confession, to work out sin; that we did not kneel and receive a consecrated wafer with 'extreme unction', and so she hated us with all the fervent rancor of religious hate. She hated us for our mission of good; for she knew we hated what she dearly loved—drunkenness and all its concomitant evils. She hated us with that envious hate of depravity, which would sink everything to its own level. She knew that we would take her dying child to a clean bed and airy room, and give it food and medicine, and nurse it into life, and she hated us for that."
"How could she? How could a mother be so wicked to her poor sick child? I am sure if I could not take care of mine, I would trust it with anybody who would save its life." Thus will say more than one Christian mother.
Think—be careful—be not uncharitable—good mother. Would you let it go with those who saved its life to be reared with them—taught their creed—perhaps to hate yours? Certainly if taught the principles of temperance—virtue—neatness—her child could not love its drunken mother, in her rags and dirt and life of sin.
"But then the child would be brought up by religious teachers, and taught to be a Christian."
Yes, a Protestant Christian; she is a good Catholic. Would you willingly give up your child if it were to be reared a Pagan, a Mahometan, or even a Jew?
"No! I would let it die."
There spoke the Five Points mother. Sooner than it should go into a Protestant house, she would see it die.