The books of Mrs. Child are numerous. We mention beside those referred to above “Flowers for Children,” three volumes (1844–1846); “Fact and Fiction” (1846); “The Power of Kindness” (1851); “A True Life of Isaac P. Hopper” (1853); “Autumnal Leaves” (1856); “Looking Toward Sunset” (1864); “The Freedman’s Book” (1865); “Maria” (1867); and “Aspirations of the World” (1878), which was the last work of the long and busy life of the grand, old woman—issued just three years before her death. In 1882, two years after her demise, a volume of her letters was published with an introduction by the Anti-Slavery poet, Whittier, and an appendix by the Anti-Slavery orator, Wendell Phillips.
A LITTLE WAIF.
(FROM “LETTERS FROM NEW YORK.”)
HE other day I went forth for exercise merely, without other hope of enjoyment than a farewell to the setting sun, on the now deserted Battery, and a fresh kiss from the breezes of the sea, ere they passed through the polluted city, bearing healing on their wings. I had not gone far, when I met a little ragged urchin, about four years old, with a heap of newspapers, “more big than he could carry,” under his little arm, and another clenched in his small red fist. The sweet voice of childhood was prematurely cracked into shrillness by screaming street cries, at the top of his lungs, and he looked blue, cold and disconsolate. May the angels guard him! How I wanted to warm him in my heart.
I stood looking after him as he went shivering along. Imagination followed him to the miserable cellar where he probably slept on dirty straw. I saw him flogged after his day of cheerless toil, because he had failed to bring home pence enough for his parents’ grog; I saw wicked ones come muttering, and beckoning between his young soul and heaven; they tempted him to steal to avoid the dreaded beating. I saw him years after, bewildered and frightened, in the police-office surrounded by hard faces. Their law-jargon conveyed no meaning to his ear, awakened no slumbering moral sense, taught him no clear distinction between right and wrong; but from their cold, harsh tones, and heartless merriment, he drew the inference that they were enemies; and as such he hated them. At that moment, one tone like a mother’s voice might have wholly changed his earthly destiny; one kind word of friendly counsel might have saved him—as if an angel, standing in the genial sunlight, had thrown to him one end of a garland, and gently diminishing the distance between them, had drawn him safely out of the deep and tangled labyrinth, where false echoes and winding paths conspired to make him lose his way. But watchmen and constables were around him, and they have small fellowship with angels. The strong impulses that might have become overwhelming love for his race are perverted to the bitterest hatred. He tries the universal resort of weakness against force; if they are too strong for him, he will be too cunning for them. Their cunning is roused to detect his cunning; and thus the gallows-game is played, with interludes of damnable merriment from police reports, whereat the heedless multitude laugh; while angels weep over the slow murder of a human soul. God grant the little shivering carrier-boy a brighter destiny than I have foreseen for him.
TO WHITTIER ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.
