Not having heard the street dialogue already related, this benevolent caution was lost upon the husband, who, on opening the note, found it as he had anticipated—a summons to call upon his lawyer in the city. High with hope, therefore,—upon the pleasures of which he had been living already too long,—not doubting that success had at length crowned the exertions of his legal advisers,—and supposing, therefore, that the school was just dissolving at the fortunate moment when it was no longer necessary to his support, he hastened across the ferry. But alas! Little indeed did he anticipate the cause of his summons to the city. The development fell upon his disappointed senses like the crash of a thunderbolt. In the progress of his investigations, the learned counsel had discovered that the accomplished lady of my friend, was none other than one of the unmarried wives of the lamented Captain Scarlett, and that the legal representatives were already in the secure possession of his estates!
CHAPTER XIII.
HE LIVES AS HE HAD NEVER EXPECTED.
"My stars shine darkly over me"—Shakspeare.
"A most poor man, made tame by fortune's blows."—Idem.
How little do one half of the world know how the other half live! And how just the remark of Goldsmith, that they who would know the miseries of the poor, must see life and endure it. More especially do these remarks hold good in respect to the inhabitants of crowded cities. In country towns, and small villages, every body knows every body, and, very commonly, almost too much of every body's business. But in large cities, the people are huddled together in close proximity, and are yet as much strangers to each other as though divided by a waste of wilderness or waters. The rich, who fare sumptuously; the middling class, who have enough, and a little to spare; and the squalid wretch who would be overjoyed with a basket of coals, and a joint of meat; may all be found in the same block, and yet neither one of them know any thing of the comforts, the distress, or the affluence of the other. The middling and lower classes of people in the country are prone to form an undue estimate of the advantages, and the comparative ease, of a city life. Because so much is said of the wealth of cities, they imagine that all who dwell in them must be rich, and consequently have no hard labor to perform. But it is a sad mistake. "Great cities," says the philosopher of Monticello, "are great sores;" and if the envious and discontented poor know little of the splendid misery of the fancied rich,—of the number of aching heads and hearts upon beds of down,—much less do the truly rich, living within great cities, and the world at large without them,—know of the wretchedness and the crime, the poverty and the woe, to be found in the great and crowded marts of trade and commerce in every country. Were mankind, in general, better informed upon these particulars, there would be less of envy in the world, and less of poverty. There would likewise be fewer people "well to do" in the country, crowding to the cities, to become beggars, and at last either to find dishonorable graves, or, when honestly dead, to merit the Italian inscription upon a well man who took physic—"I was well—I wished to be better—and here I am."
During the five years immediately succeeding the catastrophe recorded at the close of the last chapter, I neither saw, nor heard a syllable from, the subject of this narrative. The winter of 1827-28, was one of extraordinary severity in New-York. The month of January, in particular, was unusually tempestuous and severe. Those of the common poor, who had been the most improvident and reckless when they should have husbanded their earnings, were brought upon the public bounty considerably earlier than usual, and backs "hanging in ragged misery" were already more plenty than was wont.
It was on a bitterly cold Saturday morning of that month, that my old and unfortunate friend presented himself in my office—but alas how changed! He looked exceedingly dejected and poverty-stricken—as though what little of energy he ever might have possessed, had been utterly extinguished by the withering touch of penury. A single glance of course served to show that matters had gone hard with him—and that if "the world owed him a living," as he was formerly wont to boast, it was turning him off with a very scanty one. A storm, which had been fiercely raging for several days, gave no signs of exhaustion.—The snow, which had been falling for fifty or sixty hours—not in a fleecy shower, but mingled with cutting particles like hail—filled the atmosphere, and with each successive gust of a stiff northwester, was whirled aloft in vast curling sheets and wreaths—or driven through the narrow streets with a force that was blinding and almost irresistible. Nor man nor beast ventured forth, save from dire necessity, and it seemed as though the storm-king with his fiercest aspect, and armed with all his terrors, had made a conquest of the city.—Wheelwright's left arm was in a sling, and his tattered garments afforded but a sorry protection against the rude peltings of the pitiless storm, of which I have given a very inadequate description.
After the ordinary and reciprocal inquiries as to health, &c. had been interchanged, he sat several minutes with averted eyes, and without uttering a syllable. I saw that he was embarrassed, poor fellow!—and turned to the window—viewing the clouds of snow that were high upborne, like a canopy over the city, or playing in fantastic wreaths as the wind whistled around the cornices of the contiguous buildings—that he might collect himself. At length he broke silence nearly as follows:—