NEEDLE AND GARDEN.
THE STORY OF A SEAMSTRESS WHO LAID DOWN HER NEEDLE AND BECAME A STRAWBERRY-GIRL.
WRITTEN BY HERSELF.
CHAPTER III.
My experience as a seamstress thus far subjected me to mere trials of temper, or mortifications of personal pride, but never to the calamities which sometimes fall so heavily on others in a like position. Hence, while spared the latter, I was too much disposed to magnify the former: for, let our trials be few and light as they may, we are generally prone to consider them the greatest that could befall. The griefs of others, their losses, their calamities, as has often been well said, we can all bear with surprising fortitude: it is only our own that we are disposed to regard as unendurable. But in this time of discouragement there were cases brought to my notice, the severity of which fairly humbled me in the dust, filling my heart with thankfulness at the exemption extended to us, and showing me that afflictions are really great or insignificant only by comparison.
One sleety wintry night the low wail of a new-born infant was heard issuing from a bundle of ragged clothing which some poor creature had laid down on the doorstep of a house in a small by-street not many squares from our own. The house was occupied in part by a man named Varick, who had a wife and several children. This man had been an industrious mechanic, but had for two years been pursuing the downward path to ruin, a confirmed victim of the bottle. He had been forced by the destitution thus brought upon himself to abandon a snug abode in a decent street for the squalor of a rickety shell in a mean locality, and was now prostrate on his bed, dying of rapid consumption. By what mysterious providence a new-born babe should thus be sent to such a man's door is beyond my comprehension. But the wife of Varick, softer of heart than its mother, took in the shivering waif, adopted it in place of one only a few weeks older, which she had buried two days previous, and resisted all urgency of the few friends she had to send it to the almshouse.
My mother had long known Mrs. Varick. She regarded her with great interest, and had frequently visited the family, watching the progress of her husband's decline, and sympathizing with her in her incessant labor as a seamstress. Varick did nothing but drink,—she did nothing but work. The trials, the sufferings, the absolute privations which she underwent for two years, it would be difficult to describe. Her domestic labors, with the care of a sick husband, watching him by night as well as by day, left her little time or energy to devote to the needle. Yet she toiled unceasingly for the shops. Scanty indeed were their prices, scantier were her earnings, and scantier still the daily fare which the poor needle-woman was able to set before her children. Many times they cried themselves to sleep with hunger. I doubt not that the dying husband shared in these privations, as well as suffered for want of many comforts which his situation demanded. Strangely enough, in the midst of this accumulated misery, the woman's heart went out with an unconquerable sympathy for the foundling so unexpectedly left at her door. So far from proving an additional incumbrance, it seemed to be a positive comfort.
Hearing of the circumstance, my mother went immediately to see the family, taking me with her. They were quartered in a single large room of an old frame-house which was crowded with tenants of all descriptions. We found Varick on his bed, evidently very near his end. But, alas! the unhappy man, expressed the utmost horror of dying. He made no request for spiritual aid or counsel,—no mention of religion, no reference to eternity. The Saviour's name, or any allusion to the salvation which came by him, never passed his lips. Every thought was of the earth,—how to live, not how to die. I shuddered as I saw and heard him. At intervals he reached out his hand impatiently for a vial of medicine, then inquired when the doctor would come. His whole dependence was on the arm of flesh. Neither wife nor visitor ventured to direct his attention to the fact of his rapidly approaching end; for he was stubborn and repulsive. The door seemed to be shut, no more to be opened,—we could do nothing for him.
Yet while this horrible scene was passing before us, there were loud noises in the next room, penetrating the thin board partition at the head of Varick's bed. A drunken brawl was going on, with oaths and imprecations that alarmed all but the sick man and his wife, with now and then a sharp pounding on the partition, as if some one's head were being violently beaten against it. Overhead another similar disturbance occurred. Then there was a crowd of squalid faces peering in at the windows at us; for decent visitors were rare in the depraved locality of that forlorn tenant-house. Altogether, the scene sickened and almost frightened me.