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An Outcast; Or, Virtue and Faith

by F. Colburn Adams · English · Gutenberg #20745 · 708,103 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: An Outcast; Or, Virtue and Faith

Author: F. Colburn Adams


        
Release date: March 5, 2007 [eBook #20745]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN OUTCAST; OR, VIRTUE AND FAITH ***




Produced by Graeme Mackreth, Curtis Weyant and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images produced by the Wright
American Fiction Project.)






AN OUTCAST;

OR,

VIRTUE AND FAITH.

BY

F. COLBURN ADAMS.


"Be merciful to the erring."

NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY M. DOOLADY,
49 WALKER STREET.
1861.


Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861,

BY M. DOOLADY,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.




PREFACE.


When reason and conscience are a man's true guides to what he
undertakes, and he acts strictly in obedience to them, he has little to
fear from what the unthinking may say. You cannot, I hold, mistake a man
intent only on doing good. You may differ with him on the means he calls
to his aid; but having formed a distinct plan, and carried it out in
obedience to truth and right, it will be difficult to impugn the
sincerity of his motives. For myself, I care not what weapon a man
choose, so long as he wield it effectively, and in the cause of humanity
and justice. We are a sensitive nation, prone to pass great moral evils
over in silence rather than expose them boldly, or trace them to their
true sources. I am not indifferent to the duty every writer owes to
public opinion, nor the penalties he incurs in running counter to it.
But fear of public opinion, it seems to me, has been productive of much
evil, inasmuch as it prefers to let crime exist rather than engage in
reforms. Taking this view of the matter, I hold fear of public opinion
to be an evil much to be deplored. It aids in keeping out of sight that
which should be exposed to public view, and is satisfied to pass
unheeded the greatest of moral evils. Most writers touch these great
moral evils with a timidity that amounts to fear, and in describing
crimes of the greatest magnitude, do it so daintily as to divest their
arguments of all force. The public cannot reasonably be expected to
apply a remedy for an evil, unless the cause as well as the effect be
exposed truthfully to its view. It is the knowledge of their existence
and the magnitude of their influence upon society, which no false
delicacy should keep out of sight, that nerves the good and generous to
action. I am aware that in exciting this action, great care should be
taken lest the young and weak-minded become fascinated with the gilding
of the machinery called to the writer's aid. It is urged by many good
people, who take somewhat narrow views of this subject, that in dealing
with the mysteries of crime vice should only be described as an ugly
dame with most repulsive features. I differ with those persons. It would
be a violation of the truth to paint her thus, and few would read of her
in such an unsightly dress. These persons do not, I think, take a
sufficiently clear view of the grades into which the vicious of our
community are divided, and their different modes of living. They found
their opinions solely on the moral and physical condition of the most
wretched and abject class, whose sufferings they would have us hold up
to public view, a warning to those who stand hesitating on the brink
between virtue and vice. I hold it better to expose the allurements
first, and then paint vice in her natural colors--a dame so gay and
fascinating that it is difficult not to become enamored of her. The ugly
and repulsive dame would have few followers, and no need of writers to
caution the unwary against her snares. And I cannot forget, that truth
always carries the more forcible lesson. But we must paint the road to
vice as well as the castle, if we would give effect to our warning. That
road is too frequently strewn with the brightest of flowers, the thorns
only discovering themselves when the sweetness of the flowers has
departed. I have chosen, then, to describe things as they are. You,
reader, must be the judge whether I have put too much gilding on the
decorations.

I confess that the subject of this work was not congenial to my
feelings. I love to deal with the bright and cheerful of life; to leave
the dark and sorrowful to those whose love for them is stronger than
mine. Nor am I insensible to the liabilities incurred by a writer who,
having found favor with the public, ventures upon so delicate and
hazardous an undertaking. It matters not how carefully and discreetly he
perform the task, there will always be persons enough to question his
sincerity and cast suspicion upon his motives. What, I have already been
asked, was my motive for writing such a book as this? Why did I descend
into the repulsive haunts of the wretched and the gilded palaces of the
vicious for the material of a novel? My answer is in my book.

NEW YORK, _January 1st_, 1861.




AN OUTCAST.




CHAPTER I.

CHARLESTON.


This simple story commences on a November evening, in the autumn of
185-. Charleston and New York furnish me with the scenes and characters.

Our quaint old city has been in a disquiet mood for several weeks.
Yellow fever has scourged us through the autumn, and we have again taken
to scourging ourselves with secession fancies. The city has not looked
up for a month. Fear had driven our best society into the North, into
the mountains, into all the high places. Business men had nothing to do;
stately old mansions were in the care of faithful slaves, and there was
high carnival in the kitchen. Fear had shut up the churches, shut up the
law-courts, shut up society generally. There was nothing for lawyers to
do, and the buzzards found it lonely enough in the market-place. The
clergy were to be found at fashionable watering-places, and politicians
found comfort in cards and the country. Timid doctors had taken to their
heels, and were not to be found. Book-keepers and bank-clerks were on
Sullivan's Island. The poor suffered in the city, and the rich had not a
thought to give them. Grave-looking men gathered into little knots, at
street corners, and talked seriously of Death's banquet. Old negroes
gathered about the kitchen-table, and terrified themselves with tales of
death: timid ones could not be got to pass through streets where the
scourge raged fiercest. Mounted guardsmen patrolled the lonely streets
at night, their horses' hoofs sounding on the still air, like a solemn
warning through a deserted city.

Sisters of Mercy, in deep, dark garments, moved noiselessly along the
streets, by day and by night, searching out and ministering to the sick
and the dying. Like brave sentinels, they never deserted their posts.
The city government was in a state of torpor. The city government did
not know what to do. The city government never did know what to do. Four
hundred sick and dying lay languishing in the hospital. The city
government was sorry for them, and resolved that Providence would be the
best doctor. The dead gave place to the dying by dozens, and there has
been high carnival down in the dead-yard. The quick succession of
funeral trains has cast a shade of melancholy over the broad road that
leads to it. Old women are vending pies and cakes at the gates, and
little boys are sporting over the newly-made graves, that the wind has
lashed into furrows. Rude coffins stand about in piles, and tipsy
negroes are making the very air jubilant with the songs they bury the
dead to.

A change has come over the scene now. There is no more singing down in
the dead-yard. A bright sun is shedding its cheerful rays over the broad
landscape, flowers deck the roadside, and the air comes balmy and
invigorating. There has been frost down in the lowlands. A solitary
stranger paces listlessly along the walks of the dead-yard, searching
in vain for the grave of a departed friend. The scourge has left a sad
void between friends living and friends gone to eternal rest. Familiar
faces pass us on the street, only to remind us of familiar faces passed
away forever. The city is astir again. Society is coming back to us.
There is bustle in the churches, bustle in the law courts, bustle in the
hotels, bustle along the streets, bustle everywhere. There is bustle at
the steamboat landings, bustle at the railway stations, bustle in all
our high places. Vehicles piled with trunks are hurrying along the
streets; groups of well-dressed negroes are waiting their master's
return at the landings, or searching among piles of trunks for the
family baggage. Other groups are giving Mas'r and Missus such a cordial
greeting. Society is out of an afternoon, on King street, airing its
dignity. There is Mr. Midshipman Button, in his best uniform, inviting
the admiration of the fair, and making such a bow to all distinguished
persons. Midshipman Button, as he is commonly called, has come home to
us, made known to us the pleasing fact that he is ready to command our
"navy" for us, whenever we build it for him. There is Major Longstring,
of the Infantry, as fine a man in his boots as woman would fancy, ready
to fight any foe; and corporal Quod, of the same regiment, ready to
shoulder his weapon and march at a moment. We have an immense admiration
for all these heroes, just now; it is only equalled by their admiration
of themselves. The buzzards, too, have assumed an unusual air of
importance--are busy again in the market; and long-bearded politicians
are back again, at their old business, getting us in a state of
discontent with the Union and everybody in general.

There is a great opening of shutters among the old mansions. The music
of the organ resounds in the churches, and we are again in search of the
highest pinnacle to pin our dignity upon. Our best old families have
been doing the North extensively, and come home to us resolved never to
go North again. But it is fashionable to go North, and they will break
this resolution when spring comes. Mamma, and Julia Matilda have brought
home an immense stock of Northern millinery, all paid for with the
hardest of Southern money, which papa declares the greatest evil the
state suffers under. He has been down in the wilderness for the last ten
years, searching in vain for a remedy. The North is the hungry dog at
the door, and he will not be kicked away. So we have again mounted that
same old hobby-horse. There was so much low-breeding at the North,
landlords were so extortionate, vulgarity in fine clothes got in your
way wherever you went, servants were so impertinent, and the trades
people were so given to cheating. We would shake our garments of the
North, if only some one would tell us how to do it becomingly.

Master Tom and Julia Matilda differ with the old folks on this great
question of bidding adieu to the North. Tom had a "high old time
generally," and is sorry the season closed so soon. Julia Matilda has
been in a pensive mood ever since she returned. That fancy ball was so
brilliant; those moonlight drives were so pleasant; those flirtations
were carried on with such charming grace! A dozen little love affairs,
like pleasant dreams, are touching her heart with their sweet
remembrance. The more she contemplates them the sadder she becomes.
There are no drives on the beach now, no moonlight rambles, no
promenades down the great, gay verandah, no waltzing, no soul-stirring
music, no tender love-tales told under the old oaks. But they brighten
in her fancy, and she sighs for their return. She is a prisoner now,
surrounded by luxury in the grim old mansion. Julia Matilda and Master
Tom will return to the North when spring comes, and enjoy whatever there
is to be enjoyed, though Major Longstring and Mr. Midshipman Button
should get us safe out of the Union.

Go back with us, reader, not to the dead-yard, but to the quiet walks of
Magnolia Cemetery, hard by. A broad avenue cuts through the centre, and
stretches away to the west, down a gently undulating slope. Rows of tall
pines stand on either side, their branches forming an arch overhead, and
hung with long, trailing moss, moving and whispering mysteriously in the
gentle wind. Solemn cypress trees mark the by-paths; delicate flowers
bloom along their borders, and jessamine vines twine lovingly about the
branches of palmetto and magnolia trees. An air of enchanting harmony
pervades the spot; the dead could repose in no prettier shade.
Exquisitely chiselled marbles decorate the resting-places of the rich;
plain slabs mark those of the poor.

It is evening now. The shadows are deepening down the broad avenue, the
wind sighs touchingly through the tall pines, and the sinking sun is
shedding a deep purple hue over the broad landscape. A solitary
mocking-bird has just tuned its last note, and sailed swiftly into the
dark hedgerow, down in the dead-yard.

A young girl, whose fair oval face the sun of eighteen summers has
warmed into exquisite beauty, sits musingly under a cypress tree. Her
name is Anna Bonnard, and she is famous in all the city for her beauty,
as well as the symmetry of her form. Her dress is snowy white, fastened
at the neck with a blue ribbon, and the skirts flowing. Her face is
like chiselled marble, her eyes soft, black, and piercing, and deep,
dark tresses of silky hair fall down her shoulders to her waist. Youth,
beauty, and innocence are written in every feature of that fair face,
over which a pensive smile now plays, then deepens into sadness. Here
she has sat for several minutes, her head resting lightly on her right
hand, and her broad sun-hat in her left, looking intently at a newly
sodded grave with a plain white slab, on which is inscribed, in black
letters--"Poor Miranda." This is all that betrays the sleeper beneath.

"And this is where they have laid her," she says, with a sigh. "Poor
Miranda! like me, she was lost to this world. The world only knew the
worst of her." And the tears that steal from her eyes tell the tale of
her affection. "Heaven will deal kindly with the outcast, for Heaven
only knows her sorrows." She rises quickly from her seat, casts a glance
over the avenue, then pats the sods with her hands, and strews cypress
branches and flowers over the grave, saying, "This is the last of poor
Miranda. Some good friend has laid her here, and we are separated
forever. It was misfortune that made us friends." She turns slowly from
the spot, and walks down the avenue towards the great gate leading to
the city. A shadow crosses her path; she hesitates, and looks with an
air of surprise as the tall figure of a man advances hastily, saying,
"Welcome, sweet Anna--welcome home."

He extends his gloved hand, which she receives with evident reluctance.
"Pray what brought you here, Mr. Snivel?" she inquires, fixing her eyes
on him, suspiciously.

"If you would not take it impertinent, I might ask you the same
question. No, I will not. It was your charms, sweetest Anna. Love can
draw me--I am a worshipper at its fountain. And as for law,--you know I
live by that."

Mr. Snivel is what may be called a light comedy lawyer; ready to enter
the service of any friend in need. He is commonly called "Snivel the
lawyer," although the profession regard him with suspicion, and society
keeps him on its out skirts. He is, in a word, a sportsman of small
game, ready to bring down any sort of bird that chances within reach of
his fowling-piece. He is tall of figure and slender, a pink of fashion
in dress, wears large diamonds, an eye-glass, and makes the most of a
light, promising moustache. His face is small, sharp, and discolored
with the sun, his eyes grey and restless, his hair fair, his mouth wide
and characterless. Cunning and low intrigue are marked in every feature
of his face; and you look in vain for the slightest evidence of a frank
and manly nature.

"Only heard you were home an hour ago. Set right off in pursuit of you.
Cannot say exactly what impelled me. Love, perhaps, as I said before."
Mr. Snivel twirls his hat in the air, and condescends to say he feels in
an exceedingly happy state of mind. "I knew you needed a protector, and
came to offer myself as your escort. I take this occasion to say, that
you have always seen me in the false light my enemies magnify me in."

"I have no need of your escort, Mr. Snivel; and your friendship I can
dispense with, since, up to this time, it has only increased my
trouble," she interposes, continuing down the avenue.

"We all need friends----"

"True friends, you mean, Mr. Snivel."

"Well, then, have it so. You hold that all is false in men. I hold no
such thing. Come, give me your confidence, Anna. Look on the bright
side. Forget the past, and let the present serve. When you want a
friend, or a job of law, call on me." Mr. Snivel adjusts his eye-glass,
and again twirls his hat.

The fair girl shakes her head and says, "she hopes never to need either.
But, tell me, Mr. Snivel, are you not the messenger of some one else?"
she continues.

"Well, I confess," he replies, with a bow, "its partly so and partly not
so. I came to put in one word for myself and two for the judge. Its no
breach of confidence to say he loves you to distraction. At home in any
court, you know, and stands well with the bar----"

"Love for me! He can have no love for me. I am but an outcast, tossed on
the sea of uncertainty; all bright to-day, all darkness to-morrow. Our
life is a stream of excitement, down which we sail quickly to a
miserable death. I know the doom, and feel the pang. But men do not love
us, and the world never regrets us. Go, tell him to forget me."

"Forget you? not he. Sent me to say he would meet you to-night. You are
at the house of Madame Flamingo, eh?"

"I am; and sorry am I that I am. Necessity has no choice."

"You have left Mulholland behind, eh? Never was a fit companion for you.
Can say that without offence. He is a New York rough, you know.
Charleston gentlemen have a holy dislike of such fellows."

"He has been good to me. Why should I forsake him for one who affects to
love me to-day, and will loathe me to-morrow? He has been my only true
friend. Heaven may smile on us some day, and give us enough to live a
life of virtue and love. As for the mystery that separates me from my
parents, that had better remain unsolved forever." As she says this,
they pass out of the great gate, and are on the road to the city.

A darker scene is being enacted in a different part of the city. A grim
old prison, its walls, like the state's dignity, tumbling down and going
to decay; its roof black with vegetating moss, and in a state of
dilapidation generally,--stands, and has stood for a century or more, on
the western outskirts of the city. We have a strange veneration for this
damp old prison, with its strange histories cut on its inner walls. It
has been threatening to tumble down one of these days, and it does not
say much for our civilization that we have let it stand. But the
question is asked, and by grave senators, if we pull it down, what shall
we do with our pick-pockets and poor debtors? We mix them nicely up
here, and throw in a thief for a messmate. What right has a poor debtor
to demand that the sovereign state of South Carolina make a distinction
between poverty and crime? It pays fifteen cents a day for getting them
all well starved; and there its humanity ends, as all state humanity
should end.

The inner iron gate has just closed, and two sturdy constables have
dragged into the corridor a man, or what liquor has left of a man, and
left him prostrate and apparently insensible on the floor. "Seventh time
we've bring'd him 'ere a thin two months. Had to get a cart, or Phin and
me never'd a got him 'ere," says one of the men, drawing a long breath,
and dusting the sleeves of his coat with his hands.

"An officer earns what money he gits a commitin' such a cove," says the
other, shaking his head, and looking down resentfully at the man on the
floor. "Life'll go out on him like a kan'l one of these days." Officer
continues moralizing on the bad results of liquor, and deliberately
draws a commitment from his breast pocket. "Committed by Justice
Snivel--breaking the peace at the house of Madame----" He cannot make
out the name.

First officer interposes learnedly--"Madame Flamingo." "Sure enuf, he's
been playin' his shines at the old woman's house again. Why, Master
Jailer, Justice Snivel must a made fees enuf a this 'ere cove to make a
man rich enough," continues Mr. Constable Phin.

"As unwelcome a guest as comes to this establishment," rejoins the
corpulent old jailer, adjusting his spectacles, and reading the
commitment, a big key hanging from the middle finger of his left hand.
"Used to be sent up here by his mother, to be starved into reform. He is
past reform. The poor-house is the place to send him to, 'tis."

"Well, take good care on him, Master Jailer, now you've got him. He
comes of a good enough family," says the first officer.

"He's bin in this condition more nor a week--layin' down yonder, in Snug
Harbor. Liquor's drived all the sense out on him," rejoins the
second--and bidding the jailer good-morning, they retire.

The forlorn man still lies prostrate on the floor, his tattered garments
and besotted face presenting a picture of the most abject wretchedness.
The old jailer looks down upon him with an air of sympathy, and shakes
his head.

"The doctor that can cure you doesn't live in this establishment," he
says. The sound of a voice singing a song is heard, and the figure of a
powerfully framed man, dressed in a red shirt and grey homespun
trousers, advances, folds his arms deliberately, and contemplates with
an air of contempt the prostrate man. His broad red face, flat nose,
massive lips, and sharp grey eyes, his crispy red hair, bristling over a
low narrow forehead, and two deep scars on the left side of his face,
present a picture of repulsiveness not easily described. Silently and
sullenly he contemplates the object before him for several minutes, then
says:

"Dogs take me, Mister Jailer! but he's what I calls run to the dogs.
That's what whisky's did for him."

"And what it will do for you one of these days," interrupts the jailer,
admonishingly. "Up for disturbing the peace at Madame Flamingo's.
Committed by Justice Snivel."

"Throwing stones by way of repentance, eh? Tom was, at one time, as good
a customer as that house had. A man's welcome at that house when he's up
in the world. He's sure a gittin' kicked out when he is down."

"He's here, and we must get him to a cell," says the jailer, setting his
key down and preparing to lift the man on his feet.

"Look a here, Tom Swiggs,--in here again, eh?" resumes the man in the
red shirt. "Looks as if you liked the institution. Nice son of a
respectable mother, you is!" He stoops down and shakes the prostrate man
violently.

The man opens his eyes, and casts a wild glance on the group of wan
faces peering eagerly at him. "I am bad enough. You are no better than
me," he whispers. "You are always here."

"Not always. I am a nine months' guest. In for cribbing voters. Let out
when election day comes round, and paid well for my services. Sent up
when election is over, and friends get few. No moral harm in cribbing
voters. You wouldn't be worth cribbing, eh, Tom? There ain't no
politician what do'nt take off his hat, and say--'Glad to see you,
Mister Mingle,' just afore election." The man folds his arms and walks
sullenly down the corridor, leaving the newcomer to his own reflections.
There is a movement among the group looking on; and a man in the garb of
a sailor advances, presses his way through, and seizing the prostrate by
the hand, shakes it warmly and kindly. "Sorry to see you in here agin,
Tom," he says, his bronzed face lighting up with the fires of a generous
heart. "There's no man in this jail shall say a word agin Tom Swiggs. We
have sailed shipmates in this old craft afore."

The man was a sailor, and the prisoner's called him Spunyarn, by way of
shortness. Indeed, he had became so familiarized to the name, that he
would answer to none other. His friendship for the inebriate was of the
most sincere kind. He would watch over him, and nurse him into sobriety,
with the care and tenderness of a brother. "Tom was good to me, when he
had it;" he says, with an air of sympathy. "And here goes for lendin' a
hand to a shipmate in distress." He takes one arm and the jailer the
other, and together they support the inebriate to his cell. "Set me down
for a steady boarder, and have done with it," the forlorn man mutters,
as they lay him gently upon the hard cot. "Down for steady board,
jailer--that's it."

"Steady, steady now," rejoins the old sailor, as the inebriate tosses
his arms over his head. "You see, there's a heavy ground swell on just
now, and a chap what don't mind his helm is sure to get his spars
shivered." He addresses the the jailer, who stands looking with an air
of commiseration on the prostrate man. "Take in head-sail--furl
top-gallant-sails--reef topsails--haul aft main-sheet--put her helm
hard down--bring her to the wind, and there let her lay until it comes
clear weather." The man writhes and turns his body uneasily. "There,
there," continues the old sailor, soothingly; "steady, steady,--keep her
away a little, then let her luff into a sound sleep. Old Spunyarn's the
boy what'll stand watch." A few minutes more and the man is in a deep,
sound sleep, the old sailor keeping watch over him so kindly, so like a
true friend.




CHAPTER II.

THE HOUSE OF A VERY DISTINGUISHED LADY.


The mansion of Madame Flamingo stands stately in Berresford street. An
air of mystery hangs over it by day, and it is there young Charleston
holds high carnival at night. It is a very distinguished house, and
Madame Flamingo assures us she is a very distinguished lady, who means
to make her peace with heaven before she dies, and bestow largely on the
priests, who have promised to make her comfortable while on the road
through purgatory. The house is in high favor with young Charleston, and
old Charleston looks in now and then. Our city fathers have great
sympathy for it, and protect it with their presence. Verily it is a
great gate on the road to ruin, and thousands pass heedlessly through
its decorated walks, quickly reaching the dark end.

It is evening, and thin fleecy clouds flit along the heavens. The gas
sheds a pale light over the streets, and shadowy figures pass and repass
us as we turn into the narrow street leading to the house of the old
hostess. We have reached the great arched door, and stand in the shadow
of a gas-light, playing over its trap, its network of iron, and its
bright, silver plate. We pause and contemplate the massive walls, as the
thought flashes upon us--How mighty is vice, that it has got such a
mansion dedicated to its uses! Even stranger thoughts than these flit
through the mind as we hesitate, and touch the bell timidly. Now, we
have excited your curiosity, and shall not turn until we have shown you
what there is within.

We hear the bell faintly tinkle--now voices in loud conversation break
upon the ear--then all is silent. Our anxiety increases, and keeps
increasing, until a heavy footstep is heard advancing up the hall. Now
there is a whispering within--then a spring clicks, and a small square
panel opens and is filled with a broad fat face, with deep blue eyes and
a profusion of small brown curls, all framed in a frosty cap-border. It
is the old hostess, done up in her best book muslin, and so well
preserved.

"Gentlemen, or ain't ye gentlemen?" inquires the old hostess, in a low
voice. "This is a respectable house, I'd have you remember. Gentlemen
what ain't gentlemen don't git no show in this house--no they don't."
She looks curiously at us, and pauses for a reply. The display of a kid
glove and a few assuring words gain us admittance into the great hall,
where a scene of barbaric splendor excites curious emotions. "There
ain't nothin' but gentlemen gets into this house--they don't! and when
they are in they behaves like gentlemen," says the hostess, bowing
gracefully, and closing the door after us.

The time prints of sixty summers have furrowed the old hostess' brow,
and yet she seems not more than forty--is short of figure, and weighs
two hundred. Soft Persian carpets cover the floor, lounges, in carved
walnut and satin, stand along the sides; marble busts on pedestals, and
full-length figures of statesmen and warriors are interspersed at short
intervals; and the ceiling is frescoed in uncouth and fierce-looking
figures. Flowers hang from niches in the cornice; a marble group,
representing St. George and the dragon, stands at the foot of a broad
circular stairs; tall mirrors reflect and magnify each object, and over
all the gas from three chandeliers sheds a bewitching light. Such is the
gaudy scene that excites the fancy, but leaves our admiration unmoved.

"This is a castle, and a commonwealth, gentlemen. Cost me a deal of
money; might get ruined if gentlemen forgot how to conduct themselves.
Ladies like me don't get much credit for the good they do. Gentlemen
will be introduced into the parlor when they are ready," says the old
hostess, stepping briskly round us, and watching our every movement; we
are new-comers, and her gaudy tabernacle is novel to us.

"Have educated a dozen young men to the law, and made gentlemen of a
dozen more, excellent young men--fit for any society. Don't square my
accounts with the world, as the world squares its account with me," she
continues, with that air which vice affects while pleading its own
cause. She cannot shield the war of conscience that is waging in her
heart; but, unlike most of those engaged in her unnatural trade, there
is nothing in her face to indicate a heart naturally inclined to evil.
It is indeed bright with smiles, and you see only the picture of a being
sailing calmly down the smooth sea of peace and contentment. Her dress
is of black glossy satin, a cape of fine point lace covers her broad
shoulders, and bright blue cap-ribbons stream down her back.

"Listen," says the old hostess--"there's a full house to-night. Both
parlors are full. All people of good society!" she continues,
patronizingly. "Them what likes dancin' dances in the left-hand parlor.
Them what prefers to sit and converse, converses in the right-hand
parlor. Some converses about religion, some converses about
politics--(by way of lettin' you know my position, I may say that I go
for secession, out and out)--some converses about law, some converses
about beauty. There isn't a lady in this house as can't converse on
anything." Madame places her ear to the door, and thrusts her fat
jewelled fingers under her embroidered apron.

"This is my best parlor, gentlemen," she resumes; "only gentlemen of
deportment are admitted--I might add, them what takes wine, and, if they
does get a little in liquor, never loses their dignity." Madame bows,
and the door of her best parlor swings open, discovering a scene of
still greater splendor.

"Gentlemen as can't enjoy themselves in my house, don't know how to
enjoy anything. Them is all gentlemen you see, and them is all ladies
you see," says the hostess, as we advance timidly into the room, the air
of which is sickly of perfumes. The foot falls upon the softest of
carpets; quaint shadows, from stained-glass windows are flitting and
dancing on the frescoed ceiling; curtains of finest brocade, enveloped
in lace, fall cloud-like down the windows. The borderings are of
amber-colored satin, and heavy cornices, over which eagles in gilt are
perched, surmount the whole. Pictures no artist need be ashamed of
decorate the walls, groups in bronze and Parian, stand on pedestals
between the windows, and there is a regal air about the furniture, which
is of the most elaborate workmanship. But the living figures moving to
and fro, some in uncouth dresses and some scarce dressed at all, and all
reflected in the great mirrors, excite the deepest interest. Truly it is
here that vice has arrayed itself in fascinating splendors, and the
young and the old have met to pay it tribute. The reckless youth meets
the man high in power here. The grave exchange salutations with the gay.
Here the merchant too often meets his clerk, and the father his son.
And before this promiscuous throng women in bright but scanty drapery,
and wan faces, flaunt their charms.

Sitting on a sofa, is the fair young girl we saw at the cemetery. By her
side is a man of venerable presence, endeavoring to engage her in
conversation. Her face is shadowed in a pensive smile;--she listens to
what falls from the lips of her companion, shakes her head negatively,
and watches the movements of a slender, fair-haired young man, who
saunters alone on the opposite side of the room. He has a deep interest
in the fair girl, and at every turn casts a look of hate and scorn at
her companion, who is no less a person than Judge Sleepyhorn, of this
history.

"Hain't no better wine nowhere, than's got in this house," ejaculates
the old hostess, calling our attention to a massive side-board, covered
with cut-glass of various kinds. "A gentleman what's a gentleman may get
a little tipsy, providin' he do it on wine as is kept in this house, and
carry himself square." Madame motions patronizingly with her hand, bows
condescendingly, and says, "Two bottles I think you ordered,
gentlemen--what gentlemen generally call for."

Having bowed assent, and glad to get off so cheaply, Manfredo, a slave
in bright livery, is directed to bring it in.

Mr. Snivel enters, to the great delight of the old hostess and various
friends of the house. "Mr. Snivel is the spirit of this house," resumes
the old hostess, by way of introduction; "a gentleman of distinction in
the law." She turns to Mr. Snivel inquiringly. "You sent that ruffin,
Tom Swiggs, up for me to-day?"

"Lord bless you, yes--gave him two months for contemplation. Get well
starved at fifteen cents a day----"

"Sorry for the fellow," interrupts the old hostess, sympathizingly.
"That's what comes a drinkin' bad liquor. Tom used to be a first-rate
friend of this house--spent heaps of money, and we all liked him so.
Tried hard to make a man of Tom. Couldn't do it." Madame shakes her head
in sadness. "Devil got into him, somehow. Ran down, as young men will
when they gets in the way. I does my part to save them, God knows." A
tear almost steals into Madame's eyes. "When Tom used to come here,
looking so down, I'd give him a few dollars, and get him to go somewhere
else. Had to keep up the dignity of the house, you know. A man as takes
his liquor as Tom does ain't fit company for my house."

Mr. Snivel says: "As good advice, which I am bound to give his mother, I
shall say she'd better give him steady lodgings in jail." He turns and
recognizes his friend, the judge, and advances towards him. As he does
so, Anna rises quickly to her feet, and with a look of contempt,
addressing the judge, says, "Never, never. You deceived me once, you
never shall again. You ask me to separate myself from him. No, never,
never." And as she turns to walk away the judge seizes her by the hand,
and retains her. "You must not go yet," he says.

"She shall go!" exclaims the fair young man, who has been watching their
movements. "Do you know me? I am the George Mulholland you are plotting
to send to the whipping-post,--to accomplish your vile purposes. No,
sir, I am not the man you took me for, as I would show you were it not
for your grey hairs." He releases her from the judge's grasp, and stands
menacing that high old functionary with his finger. "I care not for your
power. Take this girl from me, and you pay the penalty with your life.
We are equals here. Release poor Langdon from prison, and go pay
penance over the grave of his poor wife. It's the least you can do. You
ruined her--you can't deny it." Concluding, he clasps the girl in his
arms, to the surprise of all present, and rushes with her out of the
house.

The house of Madame Flamingo is in a very distinguished state of
commotion. Men sensitive of their reputations, and fearing the presence
of the police, have mysteriously disappeared. Madame is in a fainting
condition, and several of her heroic damsels have gone screaming out of
the parlor, and have not been seen since.

Matters have quieted down now. Mr. Snivel consoles the judge for the
loss of dignity he has suffered, Madame did not quite faint, and there
is peace in the house.

Manfredo, his countenance sullen, brings in the wine. Manfredo is in bad
temper to-night. He uncorks the bottles and lets the wine foam over the
table, the sight of which sends Madame into a state of distress.

"This is all I gets for putting such good livery on you!" she says,
pushing him aside with great force. "That's thirty-nine for you in the
morning, well-laid on. You may prepare for it. Might have known better
(Madame modifies her voice) than buy a nigger of a clergyman!" She
commences filling the glasses herself, again addressing Manfredo, the
slave: "Don't do no good to indulge you. This is the way you pay me for
lettin' you go to church of a Sunday. Can't give a nigger religion
without his gettin' a big devil in him at the same time."

Manfredo passes the wine to her guests, in sullen silence, and they
drink to the prosperity of the house.

And now it is past midnight; the music in the next parlor has ceased,
St. Michael's clock has struck the hour of one, and business is at an
end in the house of the old hostess. A few languid-looking guests still
remain, the old hostess is weary with the fatigues of the night, and
even the gas seems to burn dimmer. The judge and Mr. Snivel are the last
to take their departure, and bid the hostess good-night. "I could not
call the fellow out," says the judge, as they wend their way into King
street. "I can only effect my purpose by getting him into my power. To
do that you must give me your assistance."

"Remain silent on that point," returns the other. "You have only to
leave its management to me. Nothing is easier than to get such a fellow
into the power of the law."

On turning into King street they encounter a small, youthful looking
man, hatless and coatless, his figure clearly defined in the shadows of
the gas-light, engaged in a desperate combat with the lamp-post. "Now,
Sir, defend yourself, and do it like a man, for you have the reputation
of being a craven coward," says the man, cutting and thrusting furiously
at the lamp-post; Snivel and Sleepyhorn pause, and look on astonished.
"Truly the poor man's mad," says Sleepyhorn, touching his companion on
the arm--"uncommonly mad for the season."

Mr. Snivel whispers, "Not so mad. Only courageously tight." "Gentlemen!"
says the man, reproachfully, "I am neither mad nor drunk." Here he
strikes an attitude of defence, cutting one, two, and three with his
small sword. "I am Mister Midshipman Button--no madman, not a bit of it.
As brave a man as South Carolina ever sent into the world. A man of
pluck, Sir, and genuine, at that." Again he turns and makes several
thrusts at the lamp-post, demanding that it surrender and get down on
its knees, in abject obedience to superior prowess.

"Button, Button, my dear fellow, is it you? What strange freak is this?"
inquires Mr. Snivel, extending his hand, which the little energetic man
refuses to take.

"Mister Midshipman Button, if you please, gentlemen," replies the man,
with an air of offended dignity. "I'm a gentleman, a man of honor, and
what's more, a Carolinian bred and born, or born and bred--cut it as you
like it." He makes several powerful blows at the lamp-post, and succeeds
only in breaking his sword.

"Poor man," says the judge, kindly, "he is in need of friends to take
care of him, and advise him properly. He has not far to travel before he
gets into the mad-house."

The man overhears his remarks, and with a vehement gesture and flourish
of his broken sword, says, "Do you not see, gentlemen, what work I have
made of this Northern aggressor, this huge enemy bringing oppression to
our very doors?" He turns and addresses the lamp-post in a tone of
superiority. "Surrender like a man, and confess yourself vanquished,
Northern aggressor that you are! You see, gentlemen, I have gained a
victory--let all his bowels out. Honor all belongs to my native state--I
shall resign it all to her." Here the man begins to talk in so wild a
strain, and to make so many demands of his imaginary enemy, that they
called a passing guardsman, who, seeing his strange condition, replaced
his hat, and assisted them in getting him to a place of safety for the
night, when sleep and time would restore him to a sound state of mind.




CHAPTER III.

IN WHICH THE READER IS PRESENTED WITH A VARIED PICTURE.


Tom has passed a restless night in jail. He has dreamed of bottled
snakes, with eyes wickedly glaring at him; of fiery-tailed serpents
coiling all over him; of devils in shapes he has no language to
describe; of the waltz of death, in which he danced at the mansion of
Madame Flamingo; and of his mother, (a name ever dear in his thoughts,)
who banished him to this region of vice, for what she esteemed a moral
infirmity. Further on in his dream he saw a vision, a horrible vision,
which was no less than a dispute for his person between Madame Flamingo,
a bishop, and the devil. But Madame Flamingo and the devil, who seemed
to enjoy each other's company exceedingly, got the better of the bishop,
who was scrupulous of his dignity, and not a little anxious about being
seen in such society. And from the horrors of this dream he wakes,
surprised to find himself watched over by a kind friend--a young,
comely-featured man, in whom he recognizes the earnest theologian, as he
is plumed by the prisoners, whom he daily visits in his mission of good.
There was something so frank and gentle in this young man's
demeanor--something so manly and radiant in his countenance--something
so disinterested and holy in his mission of love--something so opposite
to the coldness of the great world without--something so serene and
elevated in his youth, that even the most inveterate criminal awaited
his coming with emotions of joy, and gave a ready ear to his kindly
advice. Indeed, the prisoners called him their child; and he seemed not
dainty of their approach, but took them each by the hand, sat at their
side, addressed them as should one brother address another;--yea, he
made them to feel that what was their interest it was his joy to
promote.

The young theologian took him a seat close by the side of the dreaming
inebriate; and as he woke convulsively, and turned towards him his
distorted face, viewing with wild stare each object that met his sight,
the young man met his recognition with a smile and a warm grasp of the
hand. "I am sorry you find me here again--yes, I am."

"Better men, perhaps, have been here--"

"I am ashamed of it, though; it isn't as it should be, you see,"
interrupts Tom.

"Never mind--(the young man checks himself)--I was going to say there is
a chance for you yet; and there is a chance; and you must struggle; and
I will help you to struggle; and your friends--"

Tom interrupts by saying, "I've no friends."

"I will help you to struggle, and to overcome the destroyer. Never think
you are friendless, for then you are a certain victim in the hands of
the ruthless enemy--"

"Well, well," pauses Tom, casting a half-suspicious look at the young
man, "I forgot. There's you, and him they call old Spunyarn, are
friends, after all. You'll excuse me, but I didn't think of that;" and a
feeling of satisfaction seemed to have come over him. "How grateful to
have friends when a body's in a place of this kind," he mutters
incoherently, as the tears gush from his distended eyes, and childlike
he grasps the hand of the young man.

"Be comforted with the knowledge that you have friends, Tom. One
all-important thing is wanted, and you are a man again."

"As to that!" interrupts Tom, doubtingly, and laying his begrimed hand
on his burning forehead, while he alternately frets and frisks his
fingers through his matted hair.

"Have no doubts, Tom--doubts are dangerous."

"Well, say what it is, and I'll try what I can do. But you won't think
I'm so bad as I seem, and'll forgive me? I know what you think of me,
and that's what mortifies me; you think I'm an overdone specimen of our
chivalry--you do!"

"You must banish from your mind these despairing thoughts," replies the
young man, laying his right hand approvingly on Tom's head. "First,
Tom," he pursues, "be to yourself a friend; second, forget the error of
your mother, and forgive her sending you here; and third, cut the house
of Madame Flamingo, in which our chivalry are sure to get a shattering.
To be honest in temptation, Tom, is one of the noblest attributes of our
nature; and to be capable of forming and maintaining a resolution to
shake off the thraldom of vice, and to place oneself in the serener
atmosphere of good society, is equally worthy of the highest
commendation."

Tom received this in silence, and seemed hesitating between what he
conceived an imperative demand and the natural inclination of his
passions.

"Give me your hand, and with it your honor--I know you yet retain the
latent spark--and promise me you will lock up the cup--"

"You'll give a body a furlough, by the way of blowing off the fuddle he
has on hand?"

"I do not withhold from you any discretionary indulgence that may bring
relief--"

Tom interrupts by saying, "My mother, you know!"

"I will see her, and plead with her on your behalf; and if she have a
mother's feelings I can overcome her prejudice."

Tom says, despondingly, he has no home to go to. It's no use seeing his
mother; she's all dignity, and won't let it up an inch. "If I could only
persuade her--" Tom pauses here and shakes his head.

"Pledge me your honor you'll from this day form a resolution to reform,
Tom; and if I do not draw from your mother a reconciliation, I will seek
a home for you elsewhere."

"Well, there can't be much harm in an effort, at all events; and here's
my hand, in sincerity. But it won't do to shut down until I get over
this bit of a fog I'm now in." With childlike simplicity, Tom gives his
hand to the young man, who, as old Spunyarn enters the cell to, as he
says, get the latitude of his friend's nerves, departs in search of Mrs.
Swiggs.

Mrs. Swiggs is the stately old member of a crispy old family, that, like
numerous other families in the State, seem to have outlived two
chivalrous generations, fed upon aristocracy, and are dying out
contemplating their own greatness. Indeed, the Swiggs family, while it
lived and enjoyed the glory of its name, was very like the Barnwell
family of this day, who, one by one, die off with the very pardonable
and very harmless belief that the world never can get along without the
aid of South Carolina, it being the parthenon from which the outside
world gets all its greatness. Her leading and very warlike newspapers,
(the people of these United States ought to know, if they do not
already,) it was true, were editorialized, as it was politely called in
the little State-militant, by a species of unreputationized Jew and
Yankee; but this you should know--if you do not already, gentle
reader--that it is only because such employments are regarded by the
lofty-minded chivalry as of too vulgar a nature to claim a place in
their attention.

The clock of old Saint Michaels, a clock so tenacious of its dignity as
to go only when it pleases, and so aristocratic in its habits as not to
go at all in rainy weather;--a clock held in great esteem by the "very
first families," has just struck eleven. The young, pale-faced
missionary inquiringly hesitates before a small, two-story building of
wood, located on the upper side of Church street, and so crabbed in
appearance that you might, without endangering your reputation, have
sworn it had incorporated in its framework a portion of that chronic
disease for which the State has gained for itself an unenviable
reputation. Jutting out of the black, moss-vegetating roof, is an
old-maidish looking window, with a dowdy white curtain spitefully tucked
up at the side. The mischievous young negroes have pecked half the
bricks out of the foundation, and with them made curious grottoes on the
pavement. Disordered and unpainted clapboards spread over the dingy
front, which is set off with two upper and two lower windows, all
blockaded with infirm, green shutters. Then there is a snuffy door,
high and narrow (like the State's notions), and reached by six venerable
steps and a stoop, carefully guarded with a pine hand-rail, fashionably
painted in blue, and looking as dainty as the State's white glove. This,
reader, is the abode of the testy but extremely dignified Mrs. Swiggs.
If you would know how much dignity can be crowded into the smallest
space, you have only to look in here and be told (she closely patterns
after the State in all things!) that fifty-five summers of her crispy
life have been spent here, reading Milton's Paradise Lost and
contemplating the greatness of her departed family.

The old steps creak and complain as the young man ascends them, holding
nervously on at the blue hand-rail, and reaching in due time the stoop,
the strength of which he successively tests with his right foot, and
stands contemplating the snuffy door. A knocker painted in villanous
green--a lion-headed knocker, of grave deportment, looking as savage as
lion can well do in this chivalrous atmosphere, looks admonitiously at
him. "Well!" he sighs as he raises it, "there's no knowing what sort of
a reception I may get." He has raised the monster's head and given three
gentle taps. Suddenly a frisking and whispering, shutting of doors and
tripping of feet, is heard within; and after a lapse of several minutes
the door swings carefully open, and the dilapidated figure of an old
negro woman, lean, shrunken, and black as Egyptian darkness--with
serious face and hanging lip, the picture of piety and starvation,
gruffly asks who he is and what he wants?

Having requested an interview with her mistress, this decrepit specimen
of human infirmity half closes the door against him and doddles back. A
slight whispering, and Mrs. Swiggs is heard to say--"show him into the
best parlor." And into the best parlor, and into the august presence of
Mrs. Swiggs is he ushered. The best parlor is a little, dingy room, low
of ceiling, and skirted with a sombre-colored surbase, above which is
papering, the original color of which it would be difficult to discover.
A listen carpet, much faded and patched, spreads over the floor, the
walls are hung with several small engravings, much valued for their age
and associations, but so crooked as to give one the idea of the house
having withstood a storm at sea; and the furniture is made up of a few
venerable mahogany chairs, a small side-table, on which stands, much
disordered, several well-worn books and papers, two patch-covered
foot-stools, a straight-backed rocking-chair, in which the august woman
rocks her straighter self, and a great tin cage, from between the bars
of which an intelligent parrot chatters--"my lady, my lady, my lady!"
There is a cavernous air about the place, which gives out a sickly odor,
exciting the suggestion that it might at some time have served as a
receptacle for those second-hand coffins the State buries its poor in.

"Well! who are you? And what do you want? You have brought letters, I
s'pose?" a sharp, squeaking voice, speaks rapidly.

The young man, without waiting for an invitation to sit down, takes
nervously a seat at the side-table, saying he has come on a mission of
love.

"Love! love! eh? Young man--know that you have got into the wrong
house!" Mrs. Swiggs shakes her head, squeaking out with great animation.

There she sits, Milton's "Paradise Lost" in her witch-like fingers,
herself lean enough for the leanest of witches, and seeming to have
either shrunk away from the faded black silk dress in which she is clad,
or passed through half a century of starvation merely to bolster up her
dignity. A sharp, hatchet-face, sallow and corrugated; two wicked gray
eyes, set deep in bony sockets; a long, irregular nose, midway of which
is adjusted a pair of broad, brass-framed spectacles; a sunken,
purse-drawn mouth, with two discolored teeth protruding from her upper
lip; a high, narrow forehead, resembling somewhat crumpled parchment; a
dash of dry, brown hair relieving the ponderous border of her
steeple-crowned cap, which she seems to have thrown on her head in a
hurry; a moth-eaten, red shawl thrown spitefully over her shoulders,
disclosing a sinewy and sassafras-colored neck above, and the small end
of a gold chain in front, and, reader, you have the august Mrs. Swiggs,
looking as if she diets on chivalry and sour krout. She is indeed a nice
embodiment of several of those qualities which the State clings
tenaciously to, and calls its own, for she lives on the labor of eleven
aged negroes, five of whom are cripples.

The young man smiles, as Mrs. Swiggs increases the velocity of her
rocking, lays her right hand on the table, rests her left on her Milton,
and continues to reiterate that he has got into the wrong house.

"I have no letter, Madam--"

"I never receive people without letters--never!" again she interrupts,
testily.

"But you see, Madam--"

"No I don't. I don't see anything about it!" again she interposes,
adjusting her spectacles, and scanning him anxiously from head to foot.
"Ah, yes (she twitches her head), I see what you are--"

"I was going to say, if you please, Madam, that my mission may serve as
a passport--"

"I'm of a good family, you must know, young man. You could have learned
that of anybody before seeking this sort of an introduction. Any of our
first families could have told you about me. You must go your way, young
man!" And she twitches her head, and pulls closer about her lean
shoulders the old red shawl.

"I (if you will permit me, Madam) am not ignorant of the very high
standing of your famous family--" Madam interposes by saying, every
muscle of her frigid face unmoved the while, she is glad he knows
something, "having read of them in a celebrated work by one of our more
celebrated genealogists--"

"But you should have brought a letter from the Bishop! and upon that
based your claims to a favorable reception. Then you have read of Sir
Sunderland Swiggs, my ancestor? Ah! he was such a Baron, and owned such
estates in the days of Elizabeth. But you should have brought a letter,
young man." Mrs. Swiggs replies rapidly, alternately raising and
lowering her squeaking voice, twitching her head, and grasping tighter
her Milton.

"Those are his arms and crest." She points with her Milton to a singular
hieroglyphic, in a wiry black frame, resting on the marble-painted
mantelpiece. "He was very distinguished in his time; and such an
excellent Christian." She shakes her head and wipes the tears from her
spectacles, as her face, which had before seemed carved in wormwood,
slightly relaxes the hardness of its muscles.

"I remember having seen favorable mention of Sir Sunderland's name in
the book I refer to--"

She again interposes. The young man watches her emotions with a
penetrating eye, conscious that he has touched a chord in which all the
milk of kindness is not dried up.

"It's a true copy of the family arms. Everybody has got to having arms
now-a-days. (She points to the indescribable scrawl over the
mantelpiece.) It was got through Herald King, of London, who they say
keeps her Majesty's slippers and the great seal of State. We were very
exact, you see. Yes, sir--we were very exact. Our vulgar people, you
see--I mean such as have got up by trade, and that sort of thing--went
to a vast expense in sending to England a man of great learning and much
aforethought, to ransack heraldry court and trace out their families.
Well, he went, lived very expensively, spent several years abroad, and
being very clever in his way, returned, bringing them all pedigrees of
the very best kind. With only two exceptions, he traced them all down
into noble blood. These two, the cunning fellow had it, came of martyrs.
And to have come of the blood of martyrs, when all the others, as was
shown, came of noble blood, so displeased--the most ingenious (the old
lady shakes her head regrettingly) can't please everybody--the living
members of these families, that they refused to pay the poor man for his
researches, so he was forced to resort to a suit at law. And to this day
(I don't say it disparagingly of them!) both families stubbornly refuse
to accept the pedigree. They are both rich grocers, you see! and on this
account we were very particular about ours."

The young man thought it well not to interrupt the old woman's display
of weakness, inasmuch as it might produce a favorable change in her
feelings.

"And now, young man, what mission have you besides love?" she inquires,
adding an encouraging look through her spectacles.

"I am come to intercede--"

"You needn't talk of interceding with me; no you needn't! I've nothing
to intercede about"--she twitches her head spitefully.

"In behalf of your son."

"There--there! I knew there was some mischief. You're a Catholic! I knew
it. Never saw one of your black-coated flock about that there wasn't
mischief brewing--never! I can't read my Milton in peace for you--"

"But your son is in prison, Madam, among criminals, and subject to the
influence of their habits--"

"Precisely where I put him--where he won't disgrace the family; yes,
where he ought to be, and where he shall rot, for all me. Now, go your
way, young man; and read your Bible at home, and keep out of prisons;
and don't be trying to make Jesuits of hardened scamps like that Tom of
mine."

"I am a Christian: I would like to extend a Christian's hand to your
son. I may replace him on the holy pedestal he has fallen from--"

"You are very aggravating, young man. Do you live in South Carolina?"

The young man says he does. He is proud of the State that can boast so
many excellent families.

"I am glad of that," she says, looking querulously over her spectacles,
as she twitches her chin, and increases the velocity of her rocking. "I
wonder how folks can live out of it."

"As to that, Madam, permit me to say, I am happy to see and appreciate
your patriotism; but if you will grant me an order of release--"

"I won't hear a word now! You're very aggravating, young man--very! He
has disgraced the family; I have put him where he is seven times; he
shall rot were he is! He never shall disgrace the family again. Think of
Sir Sunderland Swiggs, and then think of him, and see what a pretty
level the family has come to! That's the place for him, I have told him
a dozen times how I wished him gone. The quicker he is out of the way,
the better for the name of the family."

The young man waits the end of this colloquy with a smile on his
countenance. "I have no doubt I can work your son's reform--perhaps make
him an honor to the family--"

"He honor the family!" she interrupts, twitches the shawl about her
shoulders, and permits herself to get into a state of general
excitement. "I should like to see one who has disgraced the family as
much as he has think of honoring it--"

"Through kindness and forbearance, Madam, a great deal may be done," the
young man replies.

"Now, you are very provoking, young man--very. Let other people alone;
go your way home, and study your Bible." And with this the old lady
calls Rebecca, the decrepit slave who opened the door, and directs her
to show the young man out. "There now!" she says testily, turning to the
marked page of her Milton.

The young man contemplates her for a few moments, but, having no
alternative, leaves reluctantly.

On reaching the stoop he encounters the tall, handsome figure of a man,
whose face is radiant with smiles, and his features ornamented with
neatly-combed Saxon hair and beard, and who taps the old negress under
the chin playfully, as she says, "Missus will be right glad to see you,
Mr. Snivel--that she will." And he bustles his way laughing into the
presence of the old lady, as if he had news of great importance for
her.




CHAPTER IV.

A FEW REFLECTIONS ON THE CURE OF VICE.


Disappointed, and not a little chagrined, at the failure of his mission,
the young man muses over the next best course to pursue. He has the
inebriate's welfare at heart; he knows there is no state of degradation
so low that the victim cannot, under proper care, be reclaimed from it;
and he feels duty calling loudly to him not to stand trembling on the
brink, but to enter the abode of the victim, and struggle to make clean
the polluted. Vice, he says to himself, is not entailed in the heart;
and if you would modify and correct the feelings inclined to evil, you
must first feed the body, then stimulate the ambition; and when you have
got the ambition right, seek a knowledge of the heart, and apply to it
those mild and judicious remedies which soften its action, and give life
to new thoughts and a higher state of existence. Once create the vine of
moral rectitude, and its branches will soon get where they can take care
of themselves. But to give the vine creation in poor soil, your watching
must exhibit forbearance, and your care a delicate hand. The
stubbornly-inclined nature, when coupled with ignorance, is that in
which vice takes deepest root, as it is, when educated, that against
which vice is least effectual. To think of changing the natural
inclination of such natures with punishment, or harsh correctives, is as
useless as would be an attempt to stop the ebbing and flowing of the
tide. You must nurture the feelings, he thought, create a
susceptibility, get the heart right, by holding out the value of a
better state of things, and make the head to feel that you are sincere
in your work of love; and, above all, you must not forget the stomach,
for if that go empty crime will surely creep into the head. You cannot
correct moral infirmity by confining the victim of it among criminals,
for no greater punishment can be inflicted on the feelings of man; and
punishment destroys rather than encourages the latent susceptibility of
our better nature. In nine cases out of ten, improper punishment makes
the hardened criminals with which your prisons are filled, destroying
forever that spark of ambition which might have been fostered into a
means to higher ends.

And as the young man thus muses, there recurs to his mind the picture of
old Absalom McArthur, a curious old man, but excessively kind, and
always ready to do "a bit of a good turn for one in need," as he would
say when a needy friend sought his assistance. McArthur is a dealer in
curiosities, is a venerable curiosity himself, and has always something
on hand to meet the wants of a community much given to antiquity and
broken reputations.

The young theologian will seek this good old man. He feels that time
will work a favorable revolution in the feelings of Tom's mother; and to
be prepared for that happy event he will plead a shelter for him under
McArthur's roof.

And now, generous reader, we will, with your permission, permit him to
go on his errand of mercy, while we go back and see how Tom prospers at
the old prison. You, we well know, have not much love of prisons. But
unless we do now and then enter them, our conceptions of how much misery
man can inflict upon man will be small indeed.

The man of sailor-like deportment, and whom the prisoners salute with
the sobriquet of "Old Spunyarn," entered, you will please remember, the
cell, as the young theologian left in search of Mrs. Swiggs, "I thought
I'd just haul my tacks aboard, run up a bit, and see what sort of
weather you were making, Tom," says he, touching clumsily his
small-brimmed, plait hat, as he recognizes the young man, whom he
salutes in that style so frank and characteristic of the craft. "He's a
bit better, sir--isn't he?" inquires Spunyarn, his broad, honest face,
well browned and whiskered, warming with a glow of satisfaction.

Receiving an answer in the affirmative, he replies he is right glad of
it, not liking to see a shipmate in a drift. And he gives his quid a
lurch aside, throws his hat carelessly upon the floor, shrugs his
shoulders, and as he styles it, nimbly brings himself to a mooring, at
Tom's side. "It's a hard comforter, this state. I don't begrudge your
mother the satisfaction she gets of sending you here. In her eyes, ye
see, yeer fit only to make fees out on, for them ar lawyer chaps. They'd
keep puttin' a body in an' out here during his natural life, just for
the sake of gettin', the fees. They don't care for such things as you
and I. We hain't no rights; and if we had, why we hain't no power. This
carry in' too much head sail, Tom, won't do--'twon't!" Spunyarn shakes
his head reprovingly, fusses over Tom, turns him over on his wales, as
he has it, and finally gets him on his beam's ends, a besotted wreck
unable to carry his canvas. "Lost yeer reckoning eh, Tom?" he continues
as that bewildered individual stares vacantly at him. The inebriate
contorts painfully his face, presses and presses his hands to his
burning forehead, and says they are firing a salute in his head, using
his brains for ammunition.

"Well, now Tom, seein' as how I'm a friend of yourn--"

"Friend of mine?" interrupts Tom, shaking his head, and peering through
his fingers mistrustfully.

"And this is a hard lee shore you've beached upon; I'll lend ye a hand
to get in the head sail, and get the craft trimmed up a little. A dash
of the same brine will help keep the ballast right, then a skysail-yard
breakfast must be carefully stowed away, in order to give a firmness to
the timbers, and on the strength of these two blocks for shoring up the
hull, you must begin little by little, and keep on brightening up until
you have got the craft all right again. And when you have got her right
you must keep her right. I say, Tom!--it won't do. You must reef down,
or the devil'll seize the helm in one of these blows, and run you into a
port too warm for pea-jackets." For a moment, Spunyarn seems half
inclined to grasp Tom by his collarless coat and shake the hydrophobia,
as he calls it, out of him; then, as if incited by a second thought, he
draws from his shirt-bosom a large, wooden comb, and humming a tune
commences combing and fussing over Tom's hair, which stands erect over
his head like marlinspikes. At length he gets a craft-like set upon his
foretop, and turning his head first to the right, then to the left, as a
child does a doll, he views him with an air of exultation. "I tell you
what it is, Tom," he continues, relieving him of the old coat, "the
bright begins to come! There's three points of weather made already."

"God bless you, Spunyarn," replies Tom, evidently touched by the
frankness and generosity of the old sailor. Indeed there was something
so whole-hearted about old Spunyarn, that he was held in universal
esteem by every one in jail, with the single exception of Milman Mingle,
the vote-cribber.

"Just think of yourself, Tom--don't mind me," pursues the sailor as Tom
squeezes firmly his hand. "You've had a hard enough time of it--" Tom
interrupts by saying, as he lays his hands upon his sides, he is sore
from head to foot.

"Don't wonder," returns the sailor. "It's a great State, this South
Carolina. It seems swarming with poor and powerless folks. Everybody has
power to put everybody in jail, where the State gives a body two
dog's-hair and rope-yarn blankets to lay upon, and grants the sheriff,
Mr. Hardscrable, full license to starve us, and put the thirty cents a
day it provides for our living into his breeches pockets. Say what you
will about it, old fellow, it's a brief way of doing a little profit in
the business of starvation. I don't say this with any ill-will to the
State that regards its powerless and destitute with such criminal
contempt--I don't." And he brings water, gets Tom upon his feet, forces
him into a clean shirt, and regards him in the light of a child whose
reformation he is determined on perfecting. He sees that in the fallen
man which implies a hope of ultimate usefulness, notwithstanding the
sullen silence, the gloomy frown on his knitted brow, and the general
air of despair that pervades the external man.

"There!" he exclaims, having improved the personal of the inebriate, and
folding his arms as he steps back apace to have a better view of his
pupil--"now, don't think of being triced up in this dreary vault. Be
cheerful, brace up your resolution--never let the devil think you know
he is trying to put the last seal on your fate--never!" Having slipped
the black kerchief from his own neck, he secures it about Tom's, adjusts
the shark's bone at the throat, and mounts the braid hat upon his head
with a hearty blow on the crown. "Look at yourself! They'd mistake you
for a captain of the foretop," he pursues, and good-naturedly he lays
his broad, browned hands upon Tom's shoulders, and forces him up to a
triangular bit of glass secured with three tacks to the wall.

Tom's hands wander down his sides as he contemplates himself in the
glass, saying: "I look a shade up, I reckon! And I feel--I have to thank
you for it, Spunyarn--something different all over me. God bless you! I
won't forget you. But I'm hungry; that's all that ails me now.

"I may thank my mother--"

"Thank yourself, Tom," interposes the sailor.

"For all this. She has driven me to this; yes, she has made my soul dead
with despair!" And he bursts into a wild, fierce laugh. A moment's
pause, and he says, in a subdued voice, "I'm a slave, a fool, a wanderer
in search of his own distress."

The kind-hearted sailor seats his pupil upon a board bench, and proceeds
down stairs, where, with the bribe of a glass of whiskey, he induces the
negro cook to prepare for Tom a bowl of coffee and a biscuit. In truth,
we must confess, that Spunyarn was so exceedingly liberal of his
friendship that he would at times appropriate to himself the personal
effects of his neighbors. But we must do him justice by saying that this
was only when a friend in need claimed his attention. And this generous
propensity he the more frequently exercised upon the effects--whiskey,
cold ham, crackers and cheese--of the vote-cribber, whom he regards as a
sort of cold-hearted land-lubber, whose political friends outside were
not what they should be. If the vote-cribber's aristocratic friends (and
South Carolina politicians were much given to dignity and bad whiskey)
sent him luxuries that tantalized the appetites of poverty-oppressed
debtors, and poor prisoners starving on a pound of bread a-day, Spunyarn
held this a legitimate plea for holding in utter contempt the right to
such gifts. And what was more singular of this man was, that he always
knew the latitude and longitude of the vote-cribber's bottle, and what
amount of water was necessary to keep up the gauge he had reduced in
supplying his flask.

And now that Tom's almost hopeless condition presents a warrantable
excuse, (the vote-cribber has this moment passed into the cell to take a
cursory glance at Tom,) Spunyarn slips nimbly into the vote-cribber's
cell, withdraws a brick from the old chimney, and seizing the black neck
of a blacker bottle, drags it forth, holds it in the shadow of the
doorway, squints exultingly at the contents, shrugs his stalwart
shoulders, and empties a third of the liquid, which he replaces with
water from a bucket near by, into his tin-topped flask. This done, he
ingeniously replaces the bottle, slides the flask suspiciously into his
bosom, saying, "It'll taste just as strong to a vote-cribber," and seeks
that greasy potentate, the prison cook. This dignitary has always laid
something aside for Spunyarn; he knows Spunyarn has something laid aside
for him, which makes the condition mutual.

"A new loafer let loose on the world!" says the vote-cribber, entering
the domain of the inebriate with a look of fierce scorn. "The State is
pestered to death with such things as you. What do they send you here
for?--disturbing the quiet and respectability of the prison! You're only
fit to enrich the bone-yard--hardly that; perhaps only for lawyers to
get fees of. The State'll starve you, old Hardscrabble'll make a few
dollars out of your feed--but what of that? We don't want you here."
There was something so sullen and mysterious in the coarse features of
this stalwart man--something so revolting in his profession, though it
was esteemed necessary to the elevation of men seeking political
popularity--something so at variance with common sense in the punishment
meted out to him who followed it, as to create a deep interest in his
history, notwithstanding his coldness towards the inebriate. And yet you
sought in vain for one congenial or redeeming trait in the character of
this man.

"I always find you here; you're a fixture, I take it--"

The vote-cribber interrupts the inebriate--"Better have said a patriot!"

"Well," returns the inebriate, "a patriot then; have it as you like it.
I'm not over-sensitive of the distinction." The fallen man drops his
head into his hands, stabbed with remorse, while the vote-cribber folds
his brawny arms leisurely, paces to and fro before him, and scans him
with his keen, gray eyes, after the manner of one mutely contemplating
an imprisoned animal.

"You need not give yourself so much concern about me--"

"I was only thinking over in my head what a good subject to crib, a week
or two before fall election, you'd be. You've a vote?"

Tom good-naturedly says he has. He always throws it for the "old
Charleston" party, being sure of a release, as are some dozen caged
birds, just before election.

"I have declared eternal hatred against that party; never pays its
cribbers!" Mingle scornfully retorts; and having lighted his pipe,
continues his pacing. "As for this jail," he mutters to himself, "I've
no great respect for it; but there is a wide difference between a man
who they put in here for sinning against himself, and one who only
violates a law of the State, passed in opposition to popular opinion.
However, you seem brightened up a few pegs, and, only let whiskey alone,
you may be something yet. Keep up an acquaintance with the pump, and be
civil to respectable prisoners, that's all."

This admonition of the vote-cribber had a deeper effect on the feelings
of the inebriate than was indicated by his outward manner. He had
committed no crime, and yet he found himself among criminals of every
kind; and what was worse, they affected to look down upon him. Had he
reached a state of degradation so low that even the felon loathed his
presence? Was he an outcast, stripped of every means of reform--of
making himself a man? Oh no! The knife of the destroyer had plunged
deep--disappointment had tortured his brain--he was drawn deeper into
the pool of misery by the fatal fascinations of the house of Madame
Flamingo, where, shunned by society, he had sought relief--but there was
yet one spark of pride lingering in his heart. That spark the
vote-cribber had touched; and with that spark Tom resolved to kindle for
himself a new existence. He had pledged his honor to the young
theologian; he would not violate it.

The old sailor, with elated feelings, and bearing in his hands a bowl of
coffee and two slices of toasted bread, is accosted by several
suspicious-looking prisoners, who have assembled in the corridor for the
purpose of scenting fresh air, with sundry questions concerning the
state of his pupil's health.

"He has had a rough night," the sailor answers, "but is now a bit calm.
In truth, he only wants a bit of good steering to get him into smooth
weather again." Thus satisfying the inquirers, he hurries up stairs as
the vote-cribber hurries down, and setting his offering on the
window-sill, draws from his bosom the concealed flask. "There, Tom!" he
says, with childlike satisfaction, holding the flask before him--"only
two pulls. To-morrow reef down to one; and the day after swear a
dissolution of copartnership, for this chap (he points to the whiskey)
is too mighty for you."

Tom hesitates, as if questioning the quality of the drug he is about to
administer.

"Only two!" interrupts the sailor. "It will reduce the ground-swell a
bit." The outcast places the flask to his lips, and having drank with
contorted face passes it back with a sigh, and extends his right hand.
"My honor is nothing to the world, Spunyarn, but it is yet something to
me; and by it I swear (here he grasps tighter the hand of the old
sailor, as a tear moistens his suffused cheeks) never to touch the
poison again. It has grappled me like a fierce animal I could not shake
off; it has made me the scoffed of felons--I will cease to be its
victim; and having gained the victory, be hereafter a friend to myself."

"God bless you--may you never want a friend, Tom--and may He give you
strength to keep the resolution. That's my wish." And the old sailor
shook Tom's hand fervently, in pledge of his sincerity.




CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH MR. SNIVEL, COMMONLY CALLED THE ACCOMMODATION MAN, IS
INTRODUCED, AND WHAT TAKES PLACE BETWEEN HIM AND MRS. SWIGGS.


Reader! have you ever witnessed how cleverly one of our mob-politicians
can, through the all-soothing medium of a mint-julep, transpose himself
from a mass of passion and bad English into a child of perfect
equanimity? If not, perhaps you have witnessed in our halls of Congress
the sudden transition through which some of our Carolina members pass
from a state of stupidity to a state of pugnacity? (We refer only to
those members who do their own "stumping," and as a natural consequence,
get into Congress through abuse of the North, bad whiskey, and a
profusion of promises to dissolve the Union.) And if you have, you may
form some idea of the suddenness with which Lady Swiggs, as she delights
in having her friends call her, transposes herself from the incarnation
of a viper into a creature of gentleness, on hearing announced the name
of Mr. Soloman Snivel.

"What!--my old friend! I wish I had words to say how glad I am to see
you, Lady Swiggs!" exclaims a tall, well-proportioned and
handsome-limbed man, to whose figure a fashionable claret-colored frock
coat, white vest, neatly-fitting dark-brown trowsers, highly-polished
boots, a cluster of diamonds set in an avalanche of corded shirt-bosom,
and carelessly-tied green cravat, lend a respectability better imagined
than described. A certain reckless dash about him, not common to a
refined gentleman, forces us to set him down as one of those individuals
who hold an uncertain position in society; and though they may now and
then mingle with men of refinement, have their more legitimate sphere in
a fashionable world of doubtful character.

"Why!--Mr. Snivel. Is it you?" responds the old woman, reciprocating his
warm shake of the hand, and getting her hard face into a smile.

"I am so glad--But (Mr. Snivel interrupts himself) never mind that!"

"You have some important news?" hastily inquires Mrs. Swiggs, laying a
bit of muslin carefully between the pages of her Milton, and returning
it to the table, saying she has just been grievously provoked by one of
that black-coated flock who go about the city in search of lambs. They
always remind her of light-houses pointing the road to the dominions of
the gentleman in black.

"Something very important!" parenthesises Soloman--"very." And he shakes
his head, touches her significantly on the arm with his orange-colored
glove,--he smiles insidiously.

"Pray be seated, Mr. Snivel. Rebecca!--bring Mr. Snivel the
rocking-chair."

"You see, my good Madam, there's such a rumor about town this morning!
(Soloman again taps her on the arm with his glove.) The cat has got out
of the bag--it's all up with the St. Cecilia!--"

"Do, Rebecca, make haste with the rocking-chair!" eagerly interrupts
the old woman, addressing herself to the negress, who fusses her way
into the room with a great old-fashioned rocking-chair. "I am so
sensitive of the character of that society," she continues with a sigh,
and wipes and rubs her spectacles, gets up and views herself in the
glass, frills over her cap border, and becomes very generally anxious.
Mrs. Swiggs is herself again. She nervously adjusts the venerable red
shawl about her shoulders, draws the newly-introduced arm-chair near her
own, ("I'm not so old, but am getting a little deaf," she says), and
begs her visitor will be seated.

Mr. Soloman, having paced twice or thrice up and down the little room,
contemplating himself in the glass at each turn, now touching his
neatly-trimmed Saxon mustache and whiskers, then frisking his fingers
through his candy-colored hair, brings his dignity into the chair.

"I said it was all up with the St. Cecilia--"

"Yes!" interrupts Mrs. Swiggs, her eyes glistening like balls of fire,
her lower jaw falling with the weight of anxiety, and fretting rapidly
her bony hands.

Soloman suddenly pauses, says that was a glorious bottle of old Madeira
with which he enjoyed her hospitality on his last visit. The flavor of
it is yet fresh in his mouth.

"Thank you--thank you! Mr. Soloman. I've a few more left. But pray lose
no time in disclosing to me what hath befallen the St. Cecilia."

"Well then--but what I say must be in confidence. (The old woman says it
never shall get beyond her lips--never!) An Englishman of goodly looks,
fashion, and money--and, what is more in favor with our first families,
a Sir attached to his name, being of handsome person and accomplished
manners, and travelling and living after the manner of a nobleman, (some
of our first families are simple enough to identify a Baronet with
nobility!) was foully set upon by the fairest and most marriageable
belles of the St. Cecilia. If he had possessed a dozen hearts, he could
have had good markets for them all. There was such a getting up of
attentions! Our fashionable mothers did their very best in arraying the
many accomplishments of their consignable daughters, setting forth in
the most foreign but not over-refined phraseology, their extensive
travels abroad--"

"Yes!" interrupts Mrs. Swiggs, nervously--"I know how they do it. It's a
pardonable weakness." And she reaches out her hand and takes to her lap
her inseparable Milton.

"And the many marked attentions--offers, in fact--they have received at
the hands of Counts and Earls, with names so unpronounceable that they
have outlived memory--"

"Perhaps I have them in my book of autographs!" interrupts the credulous
old woman, making an effort to rise and proceed to an antique side-board
covered with grotesque-looking papers.

Mr. Soloman urbanely touches her on the arm--begs she will keep her
seat. The names only apply to things of the past. He proceeds,
"Well--being a dashing fellow, as I have said--he played his game
charmingly. Now he flirted with this one, and then with that one, and
finally with the whole society, not excepting the very flirtable married
ladies;--that is, I mean those whose husbands were simple enough to let
him. Mothers were in a great flutter generally, and not a day passed but
there was a dispute as to which of their daughters he would link his
fortunes with and raise to that state so desirable in the eyes of our
very republican first families--the State-Militant of nobility--"

"I think none the worse of 'em for that," says the old woman, twitching
her wizard-like head in confirmation of her assertion. "My word for it,
Mr. Soloman, to get up in the world, and to be above the common herd, is
the grand ambition of our people; and our State has got the grand
position it now holds before the world through the influence of this
ambition."

"True!--you are right there, my dear friend. You may remember, I have
always said you had the penetration of a statesman, (Mrs. Swiggs makes a
curt bow, as a great gray cat springs into her lap and curls himself
down on her Milton;) and, as I was going on to say of this dashing
Baronet, he played our damsels about in agony, as an old sportsman does
a covey of ducks, wounding more in the head than in the heart, and
finally creating no end of a demand for matrimony. To-day, all the town
was positive, he would marry the beautiful Miss Boggs; to-morrow it was
not so certain that he would not marry the brilliant and
all-accomplished Miss Noggs; and the next day he was certain of marrying
the talented and very wealthy heiress, Miss Robbs. Mrs. Stepfast, highly
esteemed in fashionable society, and the very best gossip-monger in the
city, had confidentially spread it all over the neighborhood that Mr.
Stepfast told her the young Baronet told him (and he verily believed he
was head and ears in love with her!) Miss Robbs was the most lovely
creature he had seen since he left Belgravia. And then he went into a
perfect rhapsody of excitement while praising the poetry of her motion,
the grace with which she performed the smallest offices of the
drawing-room, her queenly figure, her round, alabaster arms, her smooth,
tapering hands, (so chastely set off with two small diamonds, and so
unlike the butchers' wives of this day, who bedazzle themselves all the
day long with cheap jewelry,)--the beautiful swell of her marble bust,
the sweet smile ever playing over her thoughtful face, the regularity of
her Grecian features, and those great, languishing eyes, constantly
flashing with the light of irresistible love. Quoth ye! according to
what Mr. Stepfast told Mrs. Stepfast, the young Baronet would, with the
ideal of a real poet, as was he, have gone on recounting her charms
until sundown, had not Mr. Stepfast invited him to a quiet family
dinner. And to confirm what Mr. Stepfast said, Miss Robbs had been seen
by Mrs. Windspin looking in at Mrs. Stebbins', the fashionable
dress-maker, while the young Baronet had twice been at Spears', in King
Street, to select a diamond necklace of great value, which he left
subject to the taste of Miss Robbs. And putting them two and them two
together there was something in it!"

"I am truly glad it's nothing worse. There has been so much scandal got
up by vulgar people against our St. Cecilia."

"Worse, Madam?" interpolates our hero, ere she has time to conclude her
sentence, "the worst is to come yet."

"And I'm a member of the society!" Mrs. Swiggs replies with a
languishing sigh, mistaking the head of the cat for her Milton, and
apologizing for her error as that venerable animal, having got well
squeezed, sputters and springs from her grasp, shaking his head,
"elected solely on the respectability of my family."

Rather a collapsed member, by the way, Mr. Soloman thinks, contemplating
her facetiously.

"Kindly proceed--proceed," she says, twitching at her cap strings, as if
impatient to get the sequel.

"Well, as to that, being a member of the St. Cecilia myself, you see,
and always--(I go in for a man keeping up in the world)--maintaining a
high position among its most distinguished members, who, I assure you,
respect me far above my real merits, (Mrs. Swiggs says we won't say
anything about that now!) and honor me with all its secrets, I may, even
in your presence, be permitted to say, that I never heard a member who
didn't speak in high praise of you and the family of which you are so
excellent a representative."

"Thank you--thank you. O thank you, Mr. Soloman!" she rejoins.

"Why, Madam, I feel all my veneration getting into my head at once when
I refer to the name of Sir Sunderland Swiggs."

"But pray what came of the young Baronet?"

"Oh!--as to him, why, you see, he was what we call--it isn't a polite
word, I confess--a humbug."

"A Baronet a humbug!" she exclaims, fretting her hands and commencing to
rock herself in the chair.

"Well, as to that, as I was going on to say, after he had beat the bush
all around among the young birds, leaving several of them wounded on the
ground--you understand this sort of thing--he took to the older ones,
and set them polishing up their feathers. And having set several very
respectable families by the ears, and created a terrible flutter among a
number of married dames--he was an adept in this sort of diplomacy, you
see--it was discovered that one very distinguished Mrs. Constance,
leader of fashion to the St. Cecilia, (and on that account on no very
good terms with the vulgar world, that was forever getting up scandal to
hurl at the society that would not permit it to soil, with its common
muslin, the fragrant atmosphere of its satin and tulle), had been
carrying on a villanous intrigue--yes, Madam! villanous intrigue! I said
discovered: the fact was, this gallant Baronet, with one servant and no
establishment, was feted and fooled for a month, until he came to the
very natural and sensible conclusion, that we were all snobbs--yes,
snobbs of the very worst kind. But there was no one who fawned over and
flattered the vanity of this vain man more than the husband of Mrs.
Constance. This poor man idolized his wife, whom he regarded as the very
diamond light of purity, nor ever mistrusted that the Baronet's
attentions were bestowed with any other than the best of motives.
Indeed, he held it extremely condescending on the part of the Baronet to
thus honor the family with his presence.

"And the Baronet, you see, with that folly so characteristic of
Baronets, was so flushed with his success in this little intrigue with
Madame Constance--the affair was too good for him to keep!--that he went
all over town showing her letters. Such nice letters as they were--brim
full of repentance, love, and appointments. The Baronet read them to Mr.
Barrows, laughing mischievously, and saying what a fool the woman must
be. Mr. Barrows couldn't keep it from Mrs. Barrows, Mrs. Barrows let the
cat out of the bag to Mrs. Simpson, and Mrs. Simpson would let Mr.
Simpson have no peace till he got on the soft side of the Baronet, and,
what was not a difficult matter, got two of the letters for her to have
a peep into. Mrs. Simpson having feasted her eyes on the two Mr. Simpson
got of the Baronet, and being exceedingly fond of such wares as they
contained, must needs--albeit, in strict confidence--whisper it to Mrs.
Fountain, who was a very fashionable lady, but unfortunately had a head
very like a fountain, with the exception that it ejected out double the
amount it took in. Mrs. Fountain--as anybody might have known--let it
get all over town. And then the vulgar herd took it up, as if it were
assafoetida, only needing a little stirring up, and hurled it back at
the St. Cecilia, the character of which it would damage without a pang
of remorse.

"Then the thing got to Constance's ears; and getting into a terrible
passion, poor Constance swore nothing would satisfy him but the
Baronet's life. But the Baronet--"

"A sorry Baronet was he--not a bit like my dear ancestor, Sir
Sunderland," Mrs. Swiggs interposes.

"Not a bit, Madam," bows our hero. "Like a sensible gentleman, as I was
about to say, finding it getting too hot for him, packed up his alls,
and in the company of his unpaid servant, left for parts westward of
this. I had a suspicion the fellow was not what he should be; and I made
it known to my select friends of the St. Cecilia, who generally
pooh-poohed me. A nobleman, they said, should receive every attention.
And to show that he wasn't what he should be, when he got to Augusta his
servant sued him for his wages; and having nothing but his chivalry,
which the servant very sensibly declined to accept for payment, he came
out like a man, and declared himself nothing but a poor player.

"But this neither satisfied Constance nor stayed the drifting current of
slander--"

"Oh! I am so glad it was no worse," Mrs. Swiggs interrupts again.

"True!" Mr. Soloman responds, laughing heartily, as he taps her on the
arm. "It might have been worse, though. Well, I am, as you know, always
ready to do a bit of a good turn for a friend in need, and pitying poor
Constance as I did, I suggested a committee of four most respectable
gentlemen, and myself, to investigate the matter. The thing struck
Constance favorably, you see. So we got ourselves together, agreed to
consider ourselves a Congress, talked over the affairs of the nation,
carried a vote to dissolve the Union, drank sundry bottles of Champagne,
(I longed for a taste of your old Madeira, Mrs. Swiggs,) and brought in
a verdict that pleased Mrs. Constance wonderfully--and so it ought. We
were, after the most careful examination, satisfied that the reports
prejudicial to the character and standing of Mrs. Constance had no
foundation in truth, being the base fabrications of evil-minded persons,
who sought, while injuring an innocent lady, to damage the reputation of
the St. Cecilia Society. Mr. Constance was highly pleased with the
finding; and finally it proved the sovereign balm that healed all their
wounds. Of course, the Knight, having departed, was spared his blood."

Here Mr. Soloman makes a pause. Mrs. Swiggs, with a sigh, says, "Is that
all?"

"Quite enough for once, my good Madam," Mr. Soloman bows in return.

"Oh! I am so glad the St. Cecilia is yet spared to us. You said, you
know, it was all up with it--"

"Up? up?--so it is! That is, it won't break it up, you know. Why--oh, I
see where the mistake is--it isn't all over, you know, seeing how the
society can live through a score of nine-months scandals. But the
thing's in every vulgar fellow's lips--that is the worst of it."

Mrs. Swiggs relishes this bit of gossip as if it were a dainty morsel;
and calling Rebecca, she commands her to forthwith proceed into the
cellar and bring a bottle of the old Madeira--she has only five
left--for Mr. Soloman. And to Mr. Soloman's great delight, the old
negress hastily obeys the summons; brings forth a mass of cobweb and
dust, from which a venerable black bottle is disinterred, uncorked, and
presented to the guest, who drinks the health of Mrs. Swiggs in sundry
well-filled glasses, which he declares choice, adding, that it always
reminds him of the age and dignity of the family. Like the State,
dignity is Mrs. Swiggs' weakness--her besetting sin. Mr. Soloman, having
found the key to this vain woman's generosity, turns it when it suits
his own convenience.

"By-the-bye," he suddenly exclaims, "you've got Tom locked up again."

"As safe as he ever was, I warrant ye!" Mrs. Swiggs replies, resuming
her Milton and rocking-chair.

"Upon my faith I agree with you. Never let him get out, for he is sure
to disgrace the family when he does--"

"I've said he shall rot there, and he shall rot! He never shall get out
to disgrace the family--no, not if I live to be as gray as Methuselah, I
warrant you!" And Mr. Soloman, having made his compliments to the sixth
glass, draws from his breast pocket a legal-looking paper, which he
passes to Mrs. Swiggs, as she ejaculates, "Oh! I am glad you thought of
that."

Mr. Soloman, watching intently the changes of her face, says, "You will
observe, Madam, I have mentioned the cripples. There are five of them.
We are good friends, you see; and it is always better to be precise in
those things. It preserves friendship. This is merely a bit of a good
turn I do for you." Mr. Soloman bows, makes an approving motion with his
hands, and lays at her disposal on the table, a small roll of bills.
"You will find two hundred dollars there," he adds, modulating his
voice. "You will find it all right; I got it for you of Keepum. We do a
little in that way; he is very exact, you see--"

"Honor is the best security between people of our standing," she
rejoins, taking up a pen and signing the instrument, which her guest
deposits snugly in his pocket, and takes his departure for the house of
Madame Flamingo.




CHAPTER VI.

CONTAINING SUNDRY MATTERS APPERTAINING TO THIS HISTORY.


If, generous reader, you had lived in Charleston, we would take it for
granted that you need no further enlightening on any of our very select
societies, especially the St. Cecilia; but you may not have enjoyed a
residence so distinguished, rendering unnecessary a few explanatory
remarks. You must know that we not only esteem ourselves the
quintessence of refinement, as we have an undisputed right to do, but
regard the world outside as exceedingly stupid in not knowing as much of
us as we profess to know of ourselves. Abroad, we wonder we are not at
once recognized as Carolinians; at home, we let the vulgar world know
who we are. Indeed, we regard the outside world--of these States we
mean--very much in that light which the Greeks of old were wont to view
the Romans in. Did we but stop here, the weakness might be pardonable.
But we lay claim to Grecian refinement of manners, while pluming all our
mob-politicians Roman orators. There is a profanity about this we
confess not to like; not that danger can befall it, but because it hath
about it that which reminds us of the oyster found in the shell of gold.
Condescending, then, to believe there exists outside of our State a few
persons silly enough to read books, we will take it for granted, reader,
that you are one of them, straightway proceeding with you to the St.
Cecilia.

You have been a fashionable traveller in Europe? You say--yes! rummaged
all the feudal castles of England, sought out the resting places of her
kings, heard some one say "that is poet's corner," as we passed into
Westminster Abbey, thought they couldn't be much to have such a
corner,--"went to look" where Byron was buried, moistened the marble
with a tear ere we were conscious of it, and saw open to us the gulf of
death as we contemplated how greedy graveyard worms were banqueting on
his greatness. A world of strange fancies came over us as we mused on
England's poets. And we dined with several Dukes and a great many more
Earls, declining no end of invitations of commoners. Very well! we
reply, adding a sigh. And on your return to your home, that you may not
be behind the fashion, you compare disparagingly everything that meets
your eye. Nothing comes up to what you saw in Europe. A servant doesn't
know how to be a servant here; and were we to see the opera at Covent
Garden, we would be sure to stare our eyes out. It is become habitual to
introduce your conversation with, "when I was in Europe." And you know
you never write a letter that you don't in some way bring in the
distinguished persons you met abroad. There is something (no matter what
it is) that forcibly reminds you of what occurred at the table of my
Lady Clarendon, with whom you twice had the pleasure and rare honor of
dining. And by implication, you always give us a sort of lavender-water
description of the very excellent persons you met there, and what they
were kind enough to say of America, and how they complimented you, and
made you the centre and all-absorbing object of attraction--in a word, a
truly wonderful person. And you will not fail, now that it is become
fashionable, to extol with fulsome breath the greatness of every
European despot it hath been your good fortune to get a bow from. And
you are just vain enough to forever keep this before your up-country
cousins. You say, too, that you have looked in at Almacks. Almacks!
alas! departed greatness. With the rise of the Casino hath it lain its
aristocratic head in the dust.

Well!--the St. Cecilia you must know (its counterparts are to be found
in all our great cities) is a miniature Almacks--a sort of leach-cloth,
through which certain very respectable individuals must pass ere they
can become the elite of our fashionable world. To become a member of the
St. Cecilia--to enjoy its recherché assemblies--to luxuriate in the
delicate perfumes of its votaries, is the besetting sin of a great many
otherwise very sensible people. And to avenge their disappointment at
not being admitted to its precious precincts, they are sure to be found
in the front rank of scandal-mongers when anything in their line is up
with a member. And it is seldom something is not up, for the society
would seem to live and get lusty in an atmosphere of perpetual scandal.
Any amount of duels have come of it; it hath made rich no end of
milliners; it hath made bankrupt husbands by the dozen; it hath been the
theatre of several distinguished romances; it hath witnessed the first
throbbings of sundry hearts, since made happy in wedlock; it hath been
the _shibolath_ of sins that shall be nameless here. The reigning belles
are all members (provided they belong to our first families) of the St.
Cecilia, as is also the prettiest and most popular unmarried parson. And
the parson being excellent material for scandal, Mother Rumor is sure to
have a dash at him. Nor does this very busy old lady seem over-delicate
about which of the belles she associates with the parson, so long as the
scandal be fashionable enough to afford her a good traffic.

There is continually coming along some unknown but very distinguished
foreigner, whom the society adopts as its own, flutters over, and
smothers with attentions, and drops only when it is discovered he is an
escaped convict. This, in deference to the reputation of the St.
Cecilia, we acknowledge has only happened twice. It has been said with
much truth that the St. Cecilia's worst sin, like the sins of its sister
societies of New York, is a passion for smothering with the satin and
Honiton of its assemblies a certain supercilious species of snobby
Englishmen, who come over here, as they have it (gun and fishing-rod in
hand), merely to get right into the woods where they can have plenty of
bear-hunting, confidently believing New York a forest inhabited by such
animals. As for our squaws, as Mr. Tom Toddleworth would say, (we shall
speak more at length of Tom!) why! they have no very bad opinion of
them, seeing that they belong to a race of semi-barbarians, whose
sayings they delight to note down. Having no society at home, this
species of gentry the more readily find themselves in high favor with
ours. They are always Oxonians, as the sons of green grocers and
fishmongers are sure to be when they come over here (so Mr. Toddleworth
has it, and he is good authority), and we being an exceedingly
impressible people, they kindly condescend to instruct us in all the
high arts, now and then correcting our very bad English. They are clever
fellows generally, being sure to get on the kind side of credulous
mothers with very impressible-headed daughters.

There was, however, always a distinguished member of the St. Cecilia
society who let out all that took place at its assemblies. The vulgar
always knew what General danced with the lovely Miss A., and how they
looked, and what they said to each other; how many jewels Miss A. wore,
and the material her dress was made of; they knew who polkaed with the
accomplished Miss B., and how like a duchess she bore herself; they had
the exact name of the colonel who dashed along so like a knight with the
graceful and much-admired Mrs. D., whose husband was abroad serving his
country; what gallant captain of dragoons (captains of infantry were
looked upon as not what they might be) promenaded so imperiously with
the vivacious Miss E.; and what distinguished foreigner sat all night in
the corner holding a suspicious and very improper conversation with Miss
F., whose skirts never were free of scandal, and who had twice got the
pretty parson into difficulty with his church. Hence there was a
perpetual outgoing of scandal on the one side, and pelting of dirt on
the other.

When Mr. Soloman sought the presence of Mrs. Swiggs and told her it was
all up with the St. Cecilia, and when that august member of the society
was so happily disappointed by his concluding with leaving it an
undamaged reputation, the whole story was not let out. In truth the
society was at that moment in a state of indignation, and its reputation
as well-nigh the last stage of disgrace as it were possible to bring it
without being entirely absorbed. The Baronet, who enjoyed a good joke,
and was not over-scrupulous in measuring the latitude of our credulity,
had, it seems, in addition to the little affair with Mrs. Constance,
been imprudent enough to introduce at one of the assemblies of the St.
Cecilia, a lady of exceedingly fair but frail import: this loveliest of
creatures--this angel of fallen fame--this jewel, so much sought after
in her own casket--this child of gentleness and beauty, before whom a
dozen gallant knights were paying homage, and claiming her hand for the
next waltz, turned out to be none other than the Anna Bonard we have
described at the house of Madame Flamingo. The discovery sent the whole
assembly into a fainting fit, and caused such a fluttering in the camp
of fashion. Reader! you may rest assured back-doors and smelling-bottles
were in great demand.

The Baronet had introduced her as his cousin; just arrived, he said, in
the care of her father--the cousin whose beauty he had so often referred
to. So complete was her toilet and disguise, that none but the most
intimate associate could have detected the fraud. Do you ask us who was
the betrayer, reader? We answer,--

One whose highest ambition did seem that of getting her from her
paramour, George Mullholland. It was Judge Sleepyhorn. Reader! you will
remember him--the venerable, snowy-haired man, sitting on the lounge at
the house of Madame Flamingo, and on whom George Mullholland swore to
have revenge. The judge of a criminal court, the admonisher of the
erring, the sentencer of felons, the _habitue_ of the house of Madame
Flamingo--no libertine in disguise could be more scrupulous of his
standing in society, or so sensitive of the opinion held of him by the
virtuous fair, than was this daylight guardian of public morals.

The Baronet got himself nicely out of the affair, and Mr. Soloman
Snivel, commonly called Mr. Soloman, the accommodation man, is at the
house of Madame Flamingo, endeavoring to effect a reconciliation between
the Judge and George Mullholland.




CHAPTER VII.

IN WHICH IS SEEN A COMMINGLING OF CITIZENS.


Night has thrown her mantle over the city. There is a great gathering of
denizens at the house of Madame Flamingo. She has a _bal-masque_
to-night. Her door is beset with richly-caparisoned equipages. The town
is on tip-toe to be there; we reluctantly follow it. An hundred
gaudily-decorated drinking saloon are filled with gaudier-dressed men.
In loudest accent rings the question--"Do you go to Madame Flamingo's
to-night?" Gentlemen of the genteel world, in shining broadcloth, touch
glasses and answer--"yes!" It is a wonderful city--this of ours. Vice
knows no restraint, poverty hath no friends here. We bow before the
shrine of midnight revelry; we bring licentiousness to our homes, but we
turn a deaf ear to the cries of poverty, and we gloat over the sale of
men.

The sickly gas-light throws a sicklier glare over the narrow, unpaved
streets. The city is on a frolic, a thing not uncommon with it. Lithe
and portly-figured men, bearing dominos in their hands, saunter along
the sidewalk, now dangling ponderous watch-chains, then flaunting
highly-perfumed cambrics--all puffing the fumes of choice cigars. If
accosted by a grave wayfarer--they are going to the opera! They are
dressed in the style of opera-goers. And the road to the opera seems the
same as that leading to the house of the old hostess. A gaily-equipped
carriage approaches. We hear the loud, coarse laughing of those it so
buoyantly bears, then there comes full to view the glare of yellow silks
and red satins, and doubtful jewels--worn by denizens from whose faded
brows the laurel wreath hath fallen. How shrunken with the sorrow of
their wretched lives, and yet how sportive they seem! The pale gas-light
throws a spectre-like hue over their paler features; the artificial
crimson with which they would adorn the withered cheek refuses to lend a
charm to features wan and ghastly. The very air is sickly with the odor
of their cosmetics. And with flaunting cambrics they bend over carriage
sides, salute each and every pedestrian, and receive in return answers
unsuited to refined ears. They pass into the dim vista, but we see with
the aid of that flickering gas, the shadow of that polluting hand which
hastens life into death.

Old Mr. McArthur, who sits smoking his long pipe in the door of his
crazy-looking curiosity shop, (he has just parted company with the young
theologian, having assured him he would find a place to stow Tom Swiggs
in,) wonders where the fashionable world of Charleston can be going? It
is going to the house of the Flamingo. The St. Cecilia were to have had
a ball to-night; scandal and the greater attractions here have closed
its doors.

A long line of carriages files past the door of the old hostess. An
incessant tripping of feet, delicately encased in bright-colored
slippers; an ominous fluttering of gaudy silks and satins; an inciting
glare of borrowed jewelry, mingling with second-hand lace; an
heterogeneous gleaming of bare, brawny arms, and distended busts, all
lend a sort of barbaric splendor to that mysterious group floating, as
it were, into a hall in one blaze of light. A soft carpet, overlain
with brown linen, is spread from the curbstone into the hall. Two
well-developed policemen guard the entrance, take tickets of those who
pass in, and then exchange smiles of recognition with venerable looking
gentlemen in masks. The hostess, a clever "business man" in her way, has
made the admission fee one dollar. Having paid the authorities ten
dollars, and honored every Alderman with a complimentary ticket, who has
a better right? No one has a nicer regard for the Board of Aldermen than
Madame Flamingo; no one can reciprocate this regard more condescendingly
than the honorable Board of Aldermen do. Having got herself arrayed in a
dress of sky-blue satin, that ever and anon streams, cloud-like, behind
her, and a lace cap of approved fashion, with pink strings nicely
bordered in gimp, and a rich Honiton cape, jauntily thrown over her
shoulders, and secured under the chin with a great cluster of blazing
diamonds, and rows of unpolished pearls at her wrists, which are
immersed in crimped ruffles, she doddles up and down the hall in a state
of general excitement. A corpulent colored man, dressed in the garb of a
beadle,--a large staff in his right hand, a cocked hat on his head, and
broad white stripes down his flowing coat, stands midway between the
parlor doors. He is fussy enough, and stupid enough, for a Paddington
beadle. Now Madame Flamingo looks scornfully at him, scolds him, pushes
him aside; he is only a slave she purchased for the purpose; she
commands that he gracefully touch his hat (she snatches it from his
head, and having elevated it over her own, performs the delicate motion
she would have him imitate) to every visitor. The least neglect of duty
will incur (she tells him in language he cannot mistake) the penalty of
thirty-nine well laid on in the morning. In another minute her fat,
chubby-face glows with smiles, her whole soul seems lighted up with
childlike enthusiasm; she has a warm welcome for each new comer, retorts
saliently upon her old friends, and says--"you know how welcome you all
are!" Then she curtsies with such becoming grace. "The house, you know,
gentlemen, is a commonwealth to-night." Ah! she recognizes the tall,
comely figure of Mr. Soloman, the accommodation man. He did not spring
from among the bevy of coat-takers, and hood-retainers, at the extreme
end of the great hall, nor from among the heap of promiscuous garments
piled in one corner; and yet he is here, looking as if some magic
process had brought him from a mysterious labyrinth. "Couldn't get along
without me, you see. It's an ambition with me to befriend everybody. If
I can do a bit of a good turn for a friend, so much the better!" And he
grasps the old hostess by the hand with a self-satisfaction he rather
improves by tapping her encouragingly on the shoulder. "You'll make a
right good thing of this!--a clear thousand, eh?"

"The fates have so ordained it," smiles naively the old woman.

"Of course the fates could not ordain otherwise--"

"As to that, Mr. Soloman, I sometimes think the gods are with me, and
then again I think they are against me. The witches--they have done my
fortune a dozen times or more--always predict evil (I consult them
whenever a sad fit comes over me), but witches are not to be depended
upon! I am sure I think what a fool I am for consulting them at all."
She espies, for her trade of sin hath made keen her eye, the venerable
figure of Judge Sleepyhorn advancing up the hall, masked. "Couldn't get
along without you," she lisps, tripping towards him, and greeting him
with the familiarity of an intimate friend. "I'm rather aristocratic,
you'll say!--and I confess I am, though a democrat in principle!" And
Madame Flamingo confirms what she says with two very dignified nods. As
the Judge passes silently in she pats him encouragingly on the back,
saying,--"There ain't no one in this house what'll hurt a hair on your
head." The Judge heeds not what she says.

"My honor for it, Madame, but I think your guests highly favored,
altogether! Fine weather, and the prospect of a _bal-masque_ of Pompeian
splendor. The old Judge, eh?"

"The gods smile--the gods smile, Mr. Soloman!" interrupts the hostess,
bowing and swaying her head in rapid succession.

"The gods have their eye on him to-night--he's a marked man! A jolly old
cove of a Judge, he is! Cares no more about rules and precedents, on the
bench, than he does for the rights and precedents some persons profess
to have in this house. A high old blade to administer justice, eh?"

"But, you see, Mr. Soloman," the hostess interrupts, a gracious bow
keeping time with the motion of her hand, "he is such an aristocratic
prop in the character of my house."

"I rather like that, I confess, Madame. You have grown rich off the
aristocracy. Now, don't get into a state of excitement!" says Mr.
Soloman, fingering his long Saxon beard, and eyeing her mischievously.
She sees a bevy of richly-dressed persons advancing up the hall in high
glee. Indeed her house is rapidly filling to the fourth story. And yet
they come! she says. "The gods are in for a time. I love to make the
gods happy."

Mr. Soloman has lain his hand upon her arm retentively.

"It is not that the aristocracy and such good persons as the Judge spend
so much here. But they give _eclat_ to the house, and _eclat_ is money.
That's it, sir! Gold is the deity of _our_ pantheon! Bless you (the
hostess evinces the enthusiasm of a politician), what better evidence of
the reputation of my house than is before you, do you want? I've shut up
the great Italian opera, with its three squalling prima donnas, which in
turn has shut up the poor, silly _Empresario_ as they call him; and the
St. Cecilia I have just used up. I'm a team in my way, you see;--run all
these fashionable oppositions right into bankruptcy." Never were words
spoken with more truth. Want of patronage found all places of rational
amusement closed. Societies for intellectual improvement, one after
another, died of poverty. Fashionable lectures had attendance only when
fashionable lecturers came from the North; and the Northman was sure to
regard our taste through the standard of what he saw before him.

The house of the hostess triumphs, and is corpulent of wealth and
splendor. To-morrow she will feed with the rich crumbs that fall from
her table the starving poor. And although she holds poor virtue in utter
contempt, feeding the poor she regards a large score on the passport to
a better world. A great marble stairway winds its way upward at the
farther end of the hall, and near it are two small balconies, one on
each side, presenting barricades of millinery surmounted with the
picturesque faces of some two dozen denizens, who keep up an incessant
gabbling, interspersed here and there with jeers directed at Mr.
Soloman. "Who is he seeking to accommodate to-night?" they inquire,
laughing merrily.

The house is full, the hostess has not space for one friend more; she
commands the policemen to close doors. An Alderman is the only exception
to her _fiat_. "You see," she says, addressing herself to a courtly
individual who has just saluted her with urbane deportment, "I must
preserve the _otium cum dignitate_ of my (did I get it right?) standing
in society. I don't always get these Latin sayings right. Our
Congressmen don't. And, you see, like them, I ain't a Latin scholar, and
may be excused for any little slips. Politics and larnin' don't get
along well together. Speaking of politics, I confess I rather belong to
the Commander and Quabblebum school--I do!"

At this moment (a tuning of instruments is heard in the dancing-hall)
the tall figure of the accommodation man is seen, in company of the
venerable Judge, passing hurriedly into a room on the right of the
winding stairs before described. "Judge!" he exclaims, closing the door
quickly after him, "you will be discovered and exposed. I am not
surprised at your passion for her, nor the means by which you seek to
destroy the relations existing between her and George Mullholland. It is
an evidence of taste in you. But she is proud to a fault, and, this I
say in friendship, you so wounded her feelings, when you betrayed her to
the St. Cecilia, that she has sworn to have revenge on you. George
Mullholland, too, has sworn to have your life.

"I tell you what it is, Judge, (the accommodation man assumes the air of
a bank director,) I have just conceived--you will admit I have an
inventive mind!--a plot that will carry you clean through the whole
affair. Your ambition is divided between a passion for this charming
creature and the good opinion of better society. The resolution to
retain the good opinion of society is doing noble battle in your heart;
but it is the weaker vessel, and it always will be so with a man of your
mould, inasmuch as such resolutions are backed up by the less fierce
elements of our nature. Put this down as an established principle. Well,
then, I will take upon myself the betrayal. I will plead you ignorant of
the charge, procure her forgiveness, and reconcile the matter with this
Mullholland. It's worth an hundred or more, eh?"

The venerable man smiles, shakes his head as if heedless of the
admonition, and again covers his face with his domino.

The accommodation man, calling him by his judicial title, says he will
yet repent the refusal!

It is ten o'clock. The gentleman slightly colored, who represents a
fussy beadle, makes a flourish with his great staff. The doors of the
dancing hall are thrown open. Like the rushing of the gulf stream there
floods in a motley procession of painted females and masked men--the
former in dresses as varied in hue as the fires of remorse burning out
their unuttered thoughts. Two and two they jeer and crowd their way
along into the spacious hall, the walls of which are frescoed in
extravagant mythological designs, the roof painted in fret work, and the
cornices interspersed with seraphs in stucco and gilt. The lights of two
massive chandeliers throw a bewitching refulgence over a scene at once
picturesque and mysterious; and from four tall mirrors secured between
the windows, is reflected the forms and movements of the masquers.

Reader! you have nothing in this democratic country with which to
successfully compare it. And to seek a comparison in the old world,
where vice, as in this city of chivalry, hath a license, serves not our
office.

Madame Flamingo, flanked right and left by twelve colored gentlemen,
who, their collars decorated with white and pink rosettes, officiate as
masters of ceremony, and form a crescent in front of the thronging
procession, steps gradually backward, curtsying and bowing, and
spreading her hands to her guests, after the manner of my Lord
Chamberlain.

Eight colored musicians, (everything is colored here,) perched on a
raised platform covered with maroon-colored plush, at the signal of a
lusty-tongued call-master, strike up a march, to which the motley throng
attempt to keep time. It is martial enough; and discordant enough for
anything but keeping time to.

The plush-covered benches filing along the sides and ends of the hall
are eagerly sought after and occupied by a strange mixture of lookers on
in Vienna. Here the hoary-headed father sits beside a newly-initiated
youth who is receiving his first lesson of dissipation. There the grave
and chivalric planter sports with the nice young man, who is cultivating
a beard and his way into the by-ways. A little further on the suspicious
looking gambler sits freely conversing with the man whom a degrading
public opinion has raised to the dignity of the judicial bench. Yonder
is seen the man who has eaten his way into fashionable society, (and by
fashionable society very much caressed in return,) the bosom companion
of the man whose crimes have made him an outcast.

Generous reader! contemplate this grotesque assembly; study the object
Madame Flamingo has in gathering it to her fold. Does it not present the
accessories to wrong doing? Does it not show that the wrong-doer and the
criminally inclined, too often receive encouragement by the example of
those whoso duty it is to protect society? The spread of crime, alas!
for the profession, is too often regarded by the lawyer as rather a
desirable means of increasing his trade.

Quadrille follows quadrille, the waltz succeeds the schottish, the scene
presents one bewildering maze of flaunting gossamers and girating
bodies, now floating sylph-like into the foreground, then whirling
seductively into the shadowy vista, where the joyous laugh dies out in
the din of voices. The excitement has seized upon the head and heart of
the young,--the child who stood trembling between the first and second
downward step finds her reeling brain a captive in this snare set to
seal her ruin.

Now the music ceases, the lusty-tongued call-master stands surveying
what he is pleased to call the oriental splendor of this grotesque
assembly. He doesn't know who wouldn't patronize such a house! It
suddenly forms in platoon, and marshalled by slightly-colored masters of
ceremony, promenades in an oblong figure.

Here, leaning modestly on the arm of a tall figure in military uniform,
and advancing slowly up the hall, is a girl of some sixteen summers. Her
finely-rounded form is in harmony with the ravishing vivacity of her
face, which is beautifully oval. Seen by the glaring gas-light her
complexion is singularly clear and pale. But that freshness which had
gained her many an admirer, and which gave such a charm to the roundness
of early youth, we look for in vain. And yet there is a softness and
delicacy about her well-cut and womanly features--a childlike sweetness
in her smile--a glow of thoughtfulness in those great, flashing black
eyes--an expression of melancholy in which at short intervals we read
her thoughts--an incessant playing of those long dark eyelashes, that
clothes her charms with an irresistible, a soul-inspiring seductiveness.
Her dress, of moire antique, is chasteness itself; her bust exquisite
symmetry; it heaves as softly as if touched by some gentle zephyr. From
an Haidean brow falls and floats undulating over her marble-like
shoulders, the massive folds of her glossy black hair. Nature had indeed
been lavish of her gifts on this fair creature, to whose charms no
painter could give a touch more fascinating. This girl, whose elastic
step and erect carriage contrasts strangely with the languid forms about
her, is Anna Bonard, the neglected, the betrayed. There passes and
repasses her, now contemplating her with a curious stare, then muttering
inaudibly, a man of portly figure, in mask and cowl. He touches with a
delicate hand his watch-guard, we see two sharp, lecherous eyes peering
through the domino; he folds his arms and pauses a few seconds, as if to
survey the metal of her companion, then crosses and recrosses her path.
Presently his singular demeanor attracts her attention, a curl of
sarcasm is seen on her lip, her brow darkens, her dark orbs flash as of
fire,--all the heart-burnings of a soul stung with shame are seen to
quicken and make ghastly those features that but a moment before shone
lambent as summer lightning. He pauses as with a look of withering scorn
she scans him from head to foot, raises covertly her left hand, tossing
carelessly her glossy hair on her shoulder, and with lightning quickness
snatches with her right the domino from his face. "Hypocrite!" she
exclaims, dashing it to the ground, and with her foot placed defiantly
upon the domino, assumes a tragic attitude, her right arm extended, and
the forefinger of her hand pointing in his face, "Ah!" she continues, in
biting accents, "it is against the perfidy of such as you. I have
struggled. Your false face, like your heart, needed a disguise. But I
have dragged it away, that you may be judged as you are. This is my
satisfaction for your betrayal. Oh that I could have deeper revenge!"
She has unmasked Judge Sleepyhorn, who stands before the anxious gaze of
an hundred night revellers, pressing eagerly to the scene of confusion.
Madame Flamingo's house, as you may judge, is much out in its dignity,
and in a general uproar. There was something touching--something that
the graver head might ponder over, in the words of this unfortunate
girl--"I have struggled!" A heedless and gold-getting world seldom
enters upon the mystery of its meaning. But it hath a meaning deep and
powerful in its appeal to society--one that might serve the good of a
commonwealth did society stoop and take it by the hand.

So sudden was the motion with which this girl snatched the mask from the
face of the Judge, (he stood as if appalled,) that, ere he had gained
his self-possession, she drew from her girdle a pearl-hilted stiletto,
and in attempting to ward off the dreadful lunge, he struck it from her
hand, and into her own bosom. The weapon fell gory to the floor--the
blood trickled down her bodice--a cry of "murder" resounded through the
hall! The administrator of justice rushed out of the door as the unhappy
girl swooned in the arms of her partner. A scene so confused and wild
that it bewilders the brain, now ensued. Madame Flamingo calls loudly
for Mr. Soloman; and as the reputation of her house is uppermost in her
thoughts, she atones for its imperiled condition by fainting in the arms
of a grave old gentleman, who was beating a hasty retreat, and whose
respectability she may compromise through this uncalled-for act.

A young man of slender form, and pale, sandy features, makes his way
through the crowd, clasps Anna affectionately in his arms, imprints a
kiss on her pallid brow, and bears her out of the hall.

By the aid of hartshorn and a few dashes of cold water, the old hostess
is pleased to come to, as we say, and set about putting her house in
order. Mr. Soloman, to the great joy of those who did not deem it
prudent to make their escape, steps in to negotiate for the peace of the
house and the restoration of order. "It is all the result of a mistake,"
he says laughingly, and good-naturedly, patting every one he meets on
the shoulder. "A little bit of jealousy on the part of the girl. It all
had its origin in an error that can be easily rectified. In a word,
there's much ado about nothing in the whole of it. Little affairs of
this kind are incident to fashionable society all over the world! The
lady being only scratched, is more frightened than hurt. Nobody is
killed; and if there were, why killings are become so fashionable, that
if the killed be not a gentleman, nobody thinks anything of it," he
continues. And Mr. Soloman being an excellent diplomatist, does, with
the aid of the hostess, her twelve masters of ceremony, her beadle, and
two policemen, forthwith bring the house to a more orderly condition.
But night has rolled into the page of the past, the gray dawn of morning
is peeping in at the half-closed windows, the lights burning in the
chandeliers shed a pale glow over the wearied features of those who
drag, as it were, their languid bodies to the stifled music of unwilling
slaves. And while daylight seems modestly contending with the vulgar
glare within, there appears among the pale revellers a paler ghost, who,
having stalked thrice up and down the hall, preserving the frigidity and
ghostliness of the tomb, answering not the questions that are put to
him, and otherwise deporting himself as becometh a ghost of good metal,
is being taken for a demon of wicked import. Now he pauses at the end of
the hall, faces with spectre-like stare the alarmed group at the
opposite end, rests his left elbow on his scythe-staff, and having set
his glass on the floor, points to its running sands warningly with his
right forefinger. Not a muscle does he move. "Truly a ghost!" exclaims
one. "A ghost would have vanished before this," whispers another. "Speak
to him," a third responds, as the musicians are seen to pale and leave
their benches. Madame Flamingo, pale and weary, is first to rush for the
door, shrieking as his ghostship turns his grim face upon her. Shriek
follows shriek, the lights are put out, the gray dawn plays upon and
makes doubly frightful the spectre. A Pandemonium of shriekings and
beseechings is succeeded by a stillness as of the tomb. Our ghost is
victor.




CHAPTER VIII.

WHAT TAKES PLACE BETWEEN GEORGE MULLHOLLAND AND MR. SNIVEL.


The man who kissed and bore away the prostrate girl was George
Mullholland.

"Oh! George--George!" she whispers imploringly, as her eyes meet his;
and turning upon the couch of her chamber, where he hath lain her,
awakes to consciousness, and finds him watching over her with a lover's
solicitude. "I was not cold because I loved you less--oh no! It was to
propitiate my ambition--to be free of the bondage of this house--to
purge myself of the past--to better my future!" And she lays her pale,
nervous hand gently on his arm--then grasps his hand and presses it
fervently to her lips.

Though placed beyond the pale of society--though envied by one extreme
and shunned by the other--she finds George her only true friend. He
parts and smooths gently over her polished shoulders her dishevelled
hair; he watches over her with the tenderness of a brother; he quenches
and wipes away the blood oozing from her wounded breast; he kisses and
kisses her flushed cheek, and bathes her Ion-like brow. He forgives all.
His heart would speak if his tongue had words to represent it. He would
the past were buried--the thought of having wronged him forgotten. She
recognizes in his solicitude for her the sincerity of his heart. It
touches like sweet music the tenderest chords of her own; and like
gushing fountains her great black eyes fill with tears. She buries her
face in her hands, crying, "Never, never, George, (I swear it before the
God I have wronged, but whose forgiveness I still pray,) will I again
forget my obligation to you! I care not how high in station he who seeks
me maybe. Ambitious!--I was misled. His money lured me away, but he
betrayed me in the face of his promises. Henceforth I have nothing for
this deceptive world; I receive of it nothing but betrayal--"

"The world wants nothing more of either of us," interrupts George.

More wounded in her feelings than in her flesh, she sobs and wrings her
hands like one in despair.

"You have ambition. I am too poor to serve your ambition!"

That word, too "poor," is more than her already distracted brain can
bear up under. It brings back the terrible picture of their past
history; it goads and agonizes her very soul. She throws her arms
frantically about his neck; presses him to her bosom; kisses him with
the fervor of a child. Having pledged his forgiveness with a kiss, and
sealed it by calling in a witness too often profaned on such occasions,
George calms her feelings as best he can; then he smooths with a gentle
hand the folds of her uplifted dress, and with them curtains the satin
slippers that so delicately encase her small feet. This done, he spreads
over her the richly-lined India morning-gown presented to her a few days
ago by the Judge, who, as she says, so wantonly betrayed her, and on
whom she sought revenge. Like a Delian maid, surrounded with Oriental
luxury, and reclining on satin and velvet, she flings her flowing hair
over her shoulders, nestles her weary head in the embroidered cushion,
and with the hand of her only true friend firmly grasped in her own,
soothes away into a calm sleep--that sovereign but too transient balm
for sorrowing hearts.

Our scene changes. The ghost hath taken himself to the graveyard; the
morning dawns soft and sunny on what we harmlessly style the sunny city
of the sunny South. Madame Flamingo hath resolved to nail another
horse-shoe over her door. She will propitiate (so she hath it) the god
of ghosts.

George Mullholland, having neither visible means of gaining a livelihood
nor a settled home, may be seen in a solitary box at Baker's, (a
coffee-house at the corner of Meeting and Market streets,) eating an
humble breakfast. About him there is a forlornness that the quick eye
never fails to discover in the manners of the homeless man. "Cleverly
done," he says, laying down the _Mercury_ newspaper, in which it is set
forth that "the St. Cecilia, in consequence of an affliction in the
family of one of its principal members, postponed its assembly last
night. The theatre, in consequence of a misunderstanding between the
manager and his people, was also closed. The lecture on comparative
anatomy, by Professor Bones, which was to have been delivered at
Hibernian Hall, is, in consequence of the indisposition of the learned
Professor, put off to Tuesday evening next, when he will have, as he
deserves, an overflowing house. Tickets, as before, may be had at all
the music and bookstores." The said facetious journal was silent on the
superior attractions at the house of the old hostess; nor did it deem it
prudent to let drop a word on the misunderstanding between the patrons
of the drama and the said theatrical manager, inasmuch as it was one of
those that are sure to give rise to a very serious misunderstanding
between that functionary and his poor people.

In another column the short but potent line met his eye: "An overflowing
and exceedingly fashionable house greeted the Negro Minstrels last
night. First-rate talent never goes begging in our city." George sips
his coffee and smiles. Wonderfully clever these editors are, he thinks.
They have nice apologies for public taste always on hand; set the
country by the ears now and then; and amuse themselves with carrying on
the most prudent description of wars.

His own isolated condition, however, is uppermost in his mind. Poverty
and wretchedness stare him in the face on one side; chivalry, on the
other, has no bows for him while daylight lasts. Instinct whispers in
his ear--where one exists the other is sure to be.

To the end that this young man will perform a somewhat important part in
the by-ways of this history, some further description of him may be
necessary. George Mullholland stands some five feet nine, is
wiry-limbed, and slender and erect of person. Of light complexion, his
features, are sharp and irregular, his face narrow and freckled, his
forehead small and retreating, his hair sandy and short-cropped. Add to
these two small, dull, gray eyes, and you have features not easily
described. Nevertheless, there are moments when his countenance wears an
expression of mildness--one in which the quick eye may read a character
more inoffensive than intrusive. A swallow-tail blue coat, of ample
skirts, and brass buttons; a bright-colored waistcoat, opening an
avalanche of shirt-bosom, blossoming with cheap jewelry; a broad,
rolling shirt-collar, tied carelessly with a blue ribbon; a
steeple-crowned hat, set on the side of his head with a challenging air;
and a pair of broadly-striped and puckered trowsers, reaching well over
a small-toed and highly-glazed boot, constitutes his dress. For the
exact set of those two last-named articles of his wardrobe he maintains
a scrupulous regard. We are compelled to acknowledge George an
importation from New York, where he would be the more readily recognized
by that vulgar epithet, too frequently used by the self-styled
refined--"a swell."

Life with George is a mere drift of uncertainty. As for aims and ends,
why he sees the safer thing in having nothing to do with them. Mr. Tom
Toddleworth once advised this course, and Tom was esteemed good
authority in such matters. Like many others, his character is made up of
those yielding qualities which the teachings of good men may elevate to
usefulness, or bad men corrupt by their examples. There is a stage in
the early youth of such persons when we find their minds singularly
susceptible, and ready to give rapid growth to all the vices of depraved
men; while they are equally apt in receiving good, if good men but take
the trouble to care for them, and inculcate lessons of morality.

Not having a recognized home, we may add, in resuming our story, that
George makes Baker's his accustomed haunt during the day, as do also
numerous others of his class--a class recognized and made use of by men
in the higher walks of life only at night.

"Ah! ha, ha! into a tight place this time, George," laughs out Mr.
Soloman, the accommodation man, as he hastens into the room, seats
himself in the box with George, and seizes his hand with the
earnestness of a true friend. Mr. Soloman can deport himself on all
occasions with becoming good nature. "It's got out, you see."

"What has got out?" interrupts George, maintaining a careless
indifference.

"Come now! none of that, old fellow."

"If I understood you--"

"That affair last night," pursues Mr. Soloman, his delicate fingers
wandering into his more delicately-combed beard. "It'll go hard with
you. He's a stubborn old cove, that Sleepyhorn; administers the law as
Cæsar was wont to. Yesterday he sent seven to the whipping-post; to-day
he hangs two 'niggers' and a white man. There is a consolation in
getting rid of the white. I say this because no one loses a dollar by
it."

George, continuing to masticate his bread, says it has nothing to do
with him. He may hang the town.

"If I can do you a bit of a good turn, why here's your man. But you must
not talk that way--you must not, George, I assure you!" Mr. Soloman
assumes great seriousness of countenance, and again, in a friendly way,
takes George by the hand. "That poignard, George, was yours. It was
picked up by myself when it fell from your hand--"

"My hand! my hand!" George quietly interposes, his countenance paling,
and his eyes wandering in excitement.

"Now don't attempt to disguise the matter, you know! Come out on the
square--own up! Jealousy plays the devil with one now and then. I
know--I have had a touch of it; had many a little love affair in my
time--"

George again interrupts by inquiring to what he is coming.

"To the attempt (the accommodation man assumes an air of sternness) you
made last night on the life of that unhappy girl. It is needless," he
adds, "to plead ignorance. The Judge has the poignard; and what's more,
there are four witnesses ready to testify. It'll go hard with you, my
boy." He shakes his head warningly.

"I swear before God and man I am as innocent as ignorant of the charge.
The poignard I confess is mine; but I had no part in the act of last
night, save to carry the prostrate girl--the girl I dearly love--away.
This I can prove by her own lips."

Mr. Soloman, with an air of legal profundity, says: "This is all very
well in its way, George, but it won't stand in law. The law is what you
have got to get at. And when you have got at it, you must get round it;
and then you must twist it and work it every which way--only be careful
not to turn its points against yourself; that, you know, is the way we
lawyers do the thing. You'll think we're a sharp lot; and we have to be
sharp, as times are."

"It is not surprising," replies George, as if waking from a fit of
abstraction, "that she should have sought revenge of one who so basely
betrayed her at the St. Cecilia--"

"There, there!" Mr. Soloman interrupts, changing entirely the expression
of his countenance, "the whole thing is out! I said there was an
unexplained mystery somewhere. It was not the Judge, but me who betrayed
her to the assembly. Bless you, (he smiles, and crooking his finger,
beckons a servant, whom he orders to bring a julep,) I was bound to do
it, being the guardian of the Society's dignity, which office I have
held for years. But you don't mean to have it that the girl
attempted--(he suddenly corrects himself)--Ah, that won't do, George.
Present my compliments to Anna--I wouldn't for the world do aught to
hurt her feelings, you know that--and say I am ready to get on my knees
to her to confess myself a penitent for having injured her feelings.
Yes, I am ready to do anything that will procure her forgiveness. I
plead guilty. But she must in return forgive the Judge. He is hard in
law matters--that is, we of the law consider him so--now and then; but
laying that aside, he is one of the best old fellows in the world, loves
Anna to distraction; nor has he the worst opinion in the world of you,
George. Fact is, I have several times heard him refer to you in terms of
praise. As I said before, being the man to do you a bit of a good turn,
take my advice as a friend. The Judge has got you in his grasp,
according to every established principle of law; and having four good
and competent witnesses, (You have no voice in law, and Anna's won't
stand before a jury,) will send you up for a twelve-months' residence in
Mount Rascal."

It will be almost needless here to add, that Mr. Soloman had, in an
interview with the Judge, arranged, in consideration of a goodly fee, to
assume the responsibility of the betrayal at the St. Cecilia; and also
to bring about a reconciliation between him and the girl he so
passionately sought.

Keep out of the way a few days, and everything will blow over and come
right. I will procure you the Judge's friendship--yes, his money, if you
want. More than that, I will acknowledge my guilt to Anna; and being as
generous of heart as she is beautiful, she will, having discovered the
mistake, forgive me and make amends to the Judge for her foolish act.

It is almost superfluous to add, that the apparent sincerity with which
the accommodation man pleaded, had its effect on the weak-minded man. He
loved dearly the girl, but poverty hung like a leaden cloud over him.
Poverty stripped him of the means of gratifying her ambition; poverty
held him fast locked in its blighting chains; poverty forbid his
rescuing her from the condition necessity had imposed upon her; poverty
was goading him into crime; and through crime only did he see the means
of securing to himself the cherished object of his love.

"I am not dead to your friendship, but I am too sad at heart to make any
pledge that involves Anna, at this moment. We met in wretchedness, came
up in neglect and crime, sealed our love with the hard seal of
suffering. Oh! what a history of misery my heart could unfold, if it had
but a tongue!" George replies, in subdued accents, as a tear courses
down his cheek.

Extending his hand, with an air of encouragement, Mr. Soloman says
nothing in the world would so much interest him as a history of the
relations existing between George and Anna. Their tastes, aims, and very
natures, are different. To him their connection is clothed in mystery.




CHAPTER IX.

IN WHICH A GLEAM OF LIGHT IS SHED ON THE HISTORY OF ANNA BONARD.


A bottle of wine, and the mild, persuasive manner of Mr. Snivel, so
completely won over George's confidence, that, like one of that class
always too ready to give out their heart-achings at the touch of
sympathy, and too easily betrayed through misplaced confidence, he
commences relating his history. That of Anna is identified with it. "We
will together proceed to New York, for it is there, among haunts of vice
and depravity--"

"In depth of degradation they have no counterpart on our globe," Mr.
Soloman interrupts, filling his glass.

"We came up together--knew each other, but not ourselves. That was our
dark age." George pauses for a moment.

"Bless you," again interrupts Mr. Soloman, tipping his glass very
politely, "I never--that is, when I hear our people who get themselves
laced into narrow-stringed Calvinism, and long-founded foreign missions,
talk--think much could have come of the dark ages. I speak after the
manner of an attorney, when I say this. We hear a deal of the dark ages,
the crimes of the dark ages, the dark idolatry of darker Africa. My word
for it, and it's something, if they had anything darker in Sodom; if
they had in Babylon a state of degradation more hardened of crime; if
in Egypt there existed a benightedness more stubbornly opposed to the
laws of God--than is to be found in that New York; that city of merchant
princes with princely palaces; that modern Pompeii into which a mighty
commerce teems its mightier gold, where a coarse throng revel in coarser
luxury, where a thousand gaudy churches rear heavenward their gaudier
steeples, then I have no pity for Sodom, not a tear to shed over fallen
Babylon, and very little love for Egypt." Mr. Snivel concludes,
saying--"proceed, young man."

"Of my mother I know nothing. My father (I mean the man I called father,
but who they said was not my father, though he was the only one that
cared anything for me) was Tom English, who used to live here and there
with me about the Points. He was always looking in at Paddy Pie's, in
Orange street, and Paddy Pie got all his money, and then Paddy Pie and
him quarrelled, and we were turned out of Paddy Pie's house. So we used
to lodge here and there, in the cellars about the Points, in 'Cut Throat
Alley,' or 'Cow Bay,' or 'Murderer's Alley,' or in 'The House of the
Nine Nations,' or wherever we could get a sixpenny rag to lay down upon.
Nobody but English seemed to care for me, and English cared for nobody
but me. And English got thick with Mrs. McCarty and her three
daughters--they kept the Rookery in 'Cow Bay,' which we used to get to
up a long pair of stairs outside, and which God knows I never want to
think of again,--where sometimes fourteen or fifteen of us, men and
women, used to sleep in a little room Mrs. McCarty paid eight dollars a
month for. And Mr. Crown, who always seemed a cross sort of man, and was
agent for all the houses on the Points I thought, used to say she had it
too cheap. And English got to thinking a good deal of Mrs. McCarty, and
Mrs. McCarty's daughters got to thinking a good deal of him. And
Boatswain Bill, who lived at the house of the 'Nine Nations'--the house
they said had a bottomless pit--and English used to fight a deal about
the Miss McCartys, and Bill one night threw English over the high stoop,
down upon the pavement, and broke his arms. They said it was a wonder it
hadn't a broken his neck. Fighting Mary (Mary didn't go by that name
then) came up and took English's part, and whipped Boatswain Bill, and
said she'd whip the whole house of the 'Nine Nations' if it had spunk
enough in it to come on. But no one dare have a set-to with Mary. Mary
used to drink a deal of gin, and say--'this gin and the devil'll get us
all one of these days. I wonder if Mr. Crown'll sell bad gin to his
highness when he gets him?' Well, Bill was sent up for six months, so
the McCartys had peace in the house, and Mrs. McCarty got him little
things, and did for English until his arms got well. Then he got a
little money, (I don't know how he got it,) and Paddy Pie made good
friends with him, and got him from the Rookery, and then all his money.
I used to think all the money in the Points found its way either to the
house of Paddy Pie, or the Bottomless Pit at the house of the 'Nine
Nations,' and all the clothes to the sign of the 'Three Martyrs,' which
the man with the eagle face kept round the corner.

"English used to say in one of his troubled fits, 'I'd like to be a
respectable man, and get out of this, if there was a chance, and do
something for you, George. There's no chance, you see.' And when we went
into Broadway, which we did now and then, and saw what another world it
was, and how rich everything looked, English used to shake his head and
say, 'they don't know how we live, George.'

"Paddy Pie soon quarrelled with English, and being penniless again we
had to shift for ourselves. English didn't like to go back to Mrs.
McCarty, so we used to sleep at Mrs. Sullivan's cellar in 'Cut Throat
Alley.' And Mrs. Sullivan's cellar was only about twelve feet by twenty,
and high enough to stand up in, and wet enough for anything, and so
overrun with rats and vermin that we couldn't sleep. There were nine
rag-beds in the cellar, which as many as twenty-three would sometimes
sleep on, or, if they were not too tipsy, try to sleep on. And folks
used to come into the cellar at night, and be found dead in the morning.
This made such a fuss in the neighborhood (there was always a fuss when
Old Bones, the coroner, was about), and frightened so many, that Mrs.
Sullivan couldn't get lodgers for weeks. She used to nail no end of
horse-shoes over the door to keep out the ghosts of them that died last.
But it was a long while before her lodgers got courage enough to come
back. Then we went to the house of the Blazers, in 'Cow Bay,' and used
to lodge there with Yellow Bill. They said Bill was a thief by
profession; but I wasn't old enough to be a judge. Little Lizza Rock,
the nondescript, as people called her, used to live at the Blazers. Poor
Lizza had a hard time of it, and used to sigh and say she wished she was
dead. Nobody thought of her, she said, and she was nothing because she
was deformed, and a cripple. She was about four feet high, had a face
like a bull-dog, and a swollen chest, and a hunchback, a deformed leg,
and went with a crutch. She never combed her hair, and what few rags she
had on her back hung in filth. What few shillings she got were sure to
find their way either into Bill's pocket, or send her tipsy into the
'Bottomless Pit' of the house of the 'Nine Nations.' There was in the
Bottomless Pit a never-ending stream of gin that sent everybody to the
Tombs, and from the Tombs to the grave. But Lizza was good to me, and
used to take care of me, and steal little things for me from old Dan
Sullivan, who begged in Broadway, and let Yellow Bill get his money, by
getting him tipsy. And I got to liking Lizza, for we both seemed to have
no one in the world who cared for us but English. And there was always
some trouble between the Blazers and the people at the house of the
'Nine Nations.'

"Well, English was hard to do for some time, and through necessity,
which he said a deal about, we were driven out of every place we had
sought shelter in. And English did something they sent him up for a
twelve-month for, and I was left to get on as I could. I was took in by
'Hard-Fisted Sall,' who always wore a knuckle-duster, and used to knock
everybody down she met, and threatened a dozen times to whip Mr.
Fitzgerald, the detective, and used to rob every one she took in tow,
and said if she could only knock down and rob the whole pumpkin-headed
corporation she should die easy, for then she would know she had done a
good thing for the public, whose money they were squandering without
once thinking how the condition of such wretches as herself could be
bettered.

"English died before he had been up two months. And death reconciled the
little difficulty between him and the McCartys; and old Mrs. McCarty's
liking for him came back, and she went crying to the Bellevue and begged
them, saying she was his mother, to let her take his body away and bury
it. They let her have it, and she brought it away to the rookery, in a
red coffin, and got a clean sheet of the Blazers, and hung it up beside
the coffin, and set four candles on a table, and a little cross between
them, and then borrowed a Bible with a cross on it, and laid it upon the
coffin. Then they sent for me. I cried and kissed poor English, for poor
English was the only father I knew, and he was good to me. I never shall
forget what I saw in that little room that night. I found a dozen
friends and the McCartys there, forming a half-circle of curious and
demoniacal faces, peering over the body of English, whose face, I
thought, formed the only repose in the picture. There were two small
pictures--one of the Saviour, and the other of Kossuth--hung at the head
and feet of the corpse; and the light shed a lurid paleness over the
living and the dead. And detective Fitzgerald and another gentleman
looked in.

"'Who's here to-night?' says Fitzgerald, in a friendly sort of way.

"'God love ye, Mr. Fitzgerald, poor English is gone! Indeed, then, it
was the will of the Lord, and He's taken him from us--poor English!'
says Mrs. McCarty. And Fitzgerald, and the gentleman with him, entered
the den, and they shuddered and sat down at the sight of the face in the
coffin. 'Sit down, Mr. Fitzgerald, do!--and may the Lord love ye! There
was a deal of good in poor English. He's gone--so he is!' said Mrs.
McCarty, begging them to sit down, and excuse the disordered state of
her few rags. She had a hard struggle to live, God knows. They took off
their hats, and sat a few minutes in solemn silence. The rags moved at
the gentleman's side, which made him move towards the door. 'What is
there, my good woman?' he inquired. 'She's a blessed child, Mr.
Fitzgerald knows that same:' says Mrs. McCarty, turning down the rags
and revealing the wasted features of her youngest girl, a child eleven
years old, sinking in death. 'God knows she'll be better in heaven, and
herself won't be long out of it,' Mrs. McCarty twice repeated,
maintaining a singular indifference to the hand of death, already upon
the child. The gentleman left some money to buy candles for poor
English, and with Mr. Fitzgerald took himself away.

"Near midnight, the tall black figure of solemn-faced Father Flaherty
stalked in. He was not pleased with the McCartys, but went to the side
of the dying child, fondled her little wasted hand in his own, and
whispered a prayer for her soul. Never shall I forget how innocently she
looked in his face while he parted the little ringlets that curled over
her brow, and told her she would soon have a better home in a better
world. Then he turned to poor English, and the cross, and the candles,
and the pictures, and the living faces that gave such a ghastliness to
the picture. Mrs. McCarty brought him a basin of water, over which he
muttered, and made it holy. Then he again muttered some unintelligible
sentences, and sprinkled the water over the dying child, over the body
of poor English, and over the living--warning Mrs. McCarty and her
daughters, as he pointed to the coffin. Then he knelt down, and they all
knelt down, and he prayed for the soul of poor English, and left. What
holy water then was left, Mrs. McCarty placed near the door, to keep the
ghosts out.

"The neighbors at the Blazers took a look in, and a few friends at the
house of the 'Nine Nations' took a look in, and 'Fighting Mary,' of
Murderer's Alley, took a look in, and before Father Flaherty had got
well out of 'Cow Bay,' it got to be thought a trifle of a wake would
console Mrs. McCarty's distracted feelings. 'Hard-fisted Sall' came to
take a last look at poor English; and she said she would spend her last
shilling over poor English, and having one, it would get a drop, and a
drop dropped into the right place would do Mrs. McCarty a deal of good.

"And Mrs. McCarty agreed that it wouldn't be amiss, and putting with
Sall's shilling the money that was to get the candles, I was sent to the
'Bottomless Pit' at the house of the 'Nine Nations,' where Mr. Crown had
a score with the old woman, and fetched away a quart of his gin, which
they said was getting the whole of them. The McCartys took a drop, and
the girls took a drop, and the neighbors took a drop, and they all kept
taking drops, and the drops got the better of them all. One of the Miss
McCartys got to having words with 'Fighting Mary,' about an old affair
in which poor English was concerned, and the words got to blows, when
Mr. Flanegan at the Blazers stepped in to make peace. But the whole
house got into a fight, and the lights were put out, the corpse knocked
over, and the child (it was found dead in the morning) suffocated with
the weight of bodies felled in the melee. The noise and cries of murder
brought the police rushing in, and most of them were dragged off to the
Station; and the next day being Sunday, I wandered homeless and
friendless into Sheriff street. Poor English was taken in charge by the
officers. They kept him over Monday to see if any one would come up and
claim him. No one came for him; no one knew more of him than that he
went by the name of English; no one ever heard him say where he came
from--he never said a word about my mother, or whether he had a relation
in the world. He was carted off to Potter's Field and buried. That was
the last of poor English.

"We seldom got much to eat in the Points, and I had not tasted food for
twenty-four hours. I sat down on the steps of a German grocery, and was
soon ordered away by the keeper. Then I wandered into a place they
called Nightmare's Alley, where three old wooden buildings with
broken-down verandas stood, and were inhabited principally by butchers.
I sat down on the steps of one, and thought if I only had a mother, or
some one to care for me, and give me something to eat, how happy I
should be. And I cried. And a great red-faced man came out of the house,
and took me in, and gave me something to eat. His name was Mike
Mullholland, and he was good to me, and I liked him, and took his name.
And he lived with a repulsive looking woman, in a little room he paid
ten dollars a month for. He had two big dogs, and worked at day work, in
a slaughter-house in Staunton street. The dogs were known in the
neighborhood as Mullholland's dogs, and with them I used to sleep on the
rags of carpet spread for us in the room with Mullholland and his wife,
who I got to calling mother. This is how I took the name of Mullholland.
I was glad to leave the Points, and felt as if I had a home. But there
was a 'Bottomless Pit' in Sheriff street, and though not so bad as the
one at the house of the 'Nine Nations,' it gave out a deal of gin that
the Mullhollands had a liking for. I was continually going for it, and
the Mullhollands were continually drinking it; and the whole
neighborhood liked it, and in 'Nightmare's Alley' the undertaker found a
profitable business.

"In the morning I went with the dogs to the slaughter-house, and there
fed them, and took care of the fighting cocks, and brought gin for the
men who worked there. In the afternoon I joined the newsboys, as ragged
and neglected as myself, gambled for cents, and watched the policemen,
whom we called the Charleys. I lived with Mullholland two years, and saw
and felt enough to make hardened any one of my age. One morning there
came a loud knocking at the door, which was followed by the entrance of
two officers. The dogs had got out and bitten a child, and the officers,
knowing who owned them, had come to arrest Mullholland. We were all
surprised, for the officers recognized in Mullholland and the woman two
old offenders. And while they were dragged off to the Tombs, I was left
to prey upon the world as best I could. Again homeless, I wandered about
with urchins as ragged and destitute as myself. It seemed to me that
everybody viewed me as an object of suspicion, for I sought in vain for
employment that would give me bread and clothing. I wanted to be honest,
and would have lived honest; but I could not make people believe me
honest. And when I told who I was, and where I sheltered myself, I was
ordered away. Everybody judged me by the filthy shreds on my back;
nobody had anything for me to do.

"I applied at a grocer's, to sweep his store and go errands. When I told
him where I had lived, he shook his head and ordered me away. Knowing I
could fill a place not unknown to me, I applied at a butcher's in Mott
street; but he pointed his knife--which left a wound in my feelings--and
ordered me away. And I was ordered away wherever I went. The doors of
the Chatham theatre looked too fine for me. My ragged condition rebuked
me wherever I went, and for more than a week I slept under a cart that
stood in Mott street. Then Tom Farley found me, and took me with him to
his cellar, in Elizabeth street, where we had what I thought a good bed
of shavings. Tom sold _Heralds_, gambled for cents, and shared with me,
and we got along. Then Tom stole a dog, and the dog got us into a deal
of trouble, which ended with getting us both into the Tombs, where Tom
was locked up. I was again adrift, as we used to call it, and thought of
poor Tom a deal. Every one I met seemed higher up in the world than I
was. But I got into Centre Market, carried baskets, and did what I could
to earn a shilling, and slept in Tom's bed, where there was some nights
fifteen and twenty like myself.

"One morning, while waiting a job, my feet and hands benumbed with the
cold, a beautiful lady slipped a shilling into my hand and passed on. To
one penniless and hungry, it seemed a deal of money. Necessity had
almost driven me to the sign of the 'Three Martyrs,' to see what the man
of the eagle face would give me on my cap, for they said the man at the
'Three Martyrs' lent money on rags such as I had. I followed the woman,
for there was something so good in the act that I could not resist it.
She entered a fine house in Leonard street.

"You must now go with me into the den of Hag Zogbaum, in 'Scorpion
Cove;' and 'Scorpion Cove' is in Pell street. Necessity next drove me
there. It is early spring, we will suppose; and being in the Bowery, we
find the streets in its vicinity reeking with putrid matter, hurling
pestilence into the dark dwellings of the unknown poor, and making
thankful the coffin-maker, who in turn thanks a nonundertaking
corporation for the rich harvest. The muck is everywhere deep enough
for hogs and fat aldermen to wallow in, and would serve well the
purposes of a supper-eating corporation, whose chief business it was to
fatten turtles and make Presidents.

"We have got through the muck of the mucky Bowery. Let us turn to the
left as we ascend the hill from Chatham street, and into a narrow,
winding way, called Doyer's street. Dutch Sophy, then, as now, sits in
all the good nature of her short, fat figure, serving her customers with
ices, at three cents. Her cunning black eyes and cheerful, ruddy face,
enhance the air of pertness that has made her a favorite with her
customers. We will pass the little wooden shop, where Mr. Saunders makes
boots of the latest style, and where old lapstone, with curious framed
spectacles tied over his bleared eyes, has for the last forty years been
seen at the window trimming welts, and mending every one's sole but his
own; we will pass the four story wooden house that the landlord never
paints--that has the little square windows, and the little square door,
and the two little iron hand rails that curl so crabbedly at the ends,
and guard four crabbeder steps that give ingress and egress to its swarm
of poor but honest tenants; we will pass the shop where a short, stylish
sign tells us Mr. Robertson makes bedsteads; and the little, slanting
house a line of yellow letters on a square of black tin tells us is a
select school for young ladies, and the bright, dainty looking house
with the green shutters, where lives Mr. Vredenburg the carpenter, who,
the neighbors say, has got up in the world, and paints his house to show
that he feels above poor folks--and find we have reached the sooty and
gin-reeking grocery of Mr. Korner, who sells the _devil's elixir_ to the
sootier devils that swarm the cellars of his neighbors. The faded blue
letters, on a strip of wood nailed to the bricks over his door, tell us
he is a dealer in 'Imported and other liquors.' Next door to Mr.
Korner's tipsy looking grocery lives Mr. Muffin, the coffin-maker, who
has a large business with the disciples who look in at Korner's. Mrs.
Downey, a decent sort of body, who lives up the alley, and takes
sixpenny lodgers by the dozen, may be seen in great tribulation with her
pet pig, who, every day, much to the annoyance of Mr. Korner, manages to
get out, and into the pool of decaying matter opposite his door, where
he is sure to get stuck, and with his natural propensity, squeals
lustily for assistance. Mrs. Downey, as is her habit, gets distracted;
and having well abused Mr. Korner for his interference in a matter that
can only concern herself and the animal, ventures to her knees in the
mire, and having seized her darling pig by the two ears, does, with the
assistance of a policeman, who kindly takes him by the tail, extricate
his porkship, to the great joy of herself. The animal scampers,
grunting, up the alley, as Mr. Korner, in his shirt sleeves, throws his
broom after him, and the policeman surlily says he wishes it was the
street commissioner.

"We have made the circle of Doyer's street, and find it fortified on
Pell street, with two decrepit wooden buildings, that the demand for the
'devil's elixir,' has converted into Dutch groceries, their exteriors
presenting the appearance of having withstood a storm of dilapidated
clapboards, broken shutters, red herrings, and onions. Mr. Voss looks
suspiciously through the broken shutters of his Gibraltar, at his
neighbor of the opposite Gibraltar, and is heard to say of his wares
that they are none of the best, and that while he sells sixpence a pint
less, the article is a shilling a pint better. And there the two
Gibraltars stand, apparently infirm, hurling their unerring missiles,
and making wreck of everything in the neighborhood.

"We have turned down Pell street toward Mott, and on the north side a
light-colored sign, representing a smith in the act of shoeing a horse,
attracts the eye, and tells us the old cavern-like building over which
it swings, is where Mr. Mooney does smithwork and shoeing. And a little
further on, a dash of yellow and white paint on a little sign-board at
the entrance of an alley, guarded on one side by a broken-down shed, and
on the other, by a three-story, narrow, brick building (from the windows
of which trail long water-stains, and from the broken panes a dozen
curious black heads, of as many curious eyed negroes protrude), tells us
somewhat indefinitely, that Mister Mills, white-washer and wall-colorer,
may be found in the neighborhood, which, judging from outward
appearances, stands much in need of this good man's services. Just keep
your eye on the sign of the white-washer and wall-colorer, and passing
up the sickly alley it tells you Mister Mills maybe found in, you will
find yourself (having picked your way over putrid matter, and placed
your perfumed cambric where it will protect your lungs from the
inhalation of pestilential air,) in the cozy area of 'Scorpion Cove.'
Scorpion Cove is bounded at one end by a two-story wooden house, with
two decayed and broken verandas in front, and rickety steps leading here
and there to suspicious looking passages, into which, and out of which a
never-ending platoon of the rising generation crawl and toddle, keep up
a cheap serenade, and like rats, scamper away at the sight of a
stranger; and on the other, by the back of the brick house with the
negro-headed front. At the sides are two broken-down board fences, and
forming a sort of network across the cove, are an innumerable quantity
of unoccupied clothes-lines, which would seem only to serve the
mischievous propensities of young negroes and the rats. There is any
quantity of rubbish in 'Scorpion Cove,' and any amount of
disease-breeding cesspools; but the corporation never heard of 'Scorpion
Cove,' and wouldn't look into it if it had. If you ask me how it came to
be called 'Scorpion Cove,' I will tell you. The brick house at one end
was occupied by negroes; and the progeny of these negroes swarmed over
the cove, and were called scorpions. The old house of the verandas at
the other end, and which had an air of being propped up after a shock of
paralysis, was inhabited by twenty or more families, of the Teutonic
race, whose numerous progeny, called the hedge-hogs, were more than a
match for the scorpions, and with that jealousy of each other which
animates these races did the scorpions and hedge-hogs get at war. In the
morning the scorpions would crawl up through holes in the cellar,
through broken windows, through the trap-doors, down the long stairway
that wound from the second and third stories over the broken pavilion,
and from nobody could tell where--for they came, it seems, from every
rat-hole, and with rolling white eyes, marshalled themselves for battle.
The hedge-hogs mustering in similar strength, and springing up from no
one could tell where, would set upon the scorpions, and after a goodly
amount of wallowing in the mire, pulling hair and wool, scratching faces
and pommeling noses, the scorpions being alternately the victors and
vanquished, the war would end at the appearance of Hag Zogbaum, who,
with her broom, would cause the scorpions to beat a hasty retreat. The
hedge-hogs generally came off victorious, for they were the stronger
race. But the old hedge-hogs got much shattered in time by the
broadsides of the two Gibraltars, which sent them broadside on into the
Tombs. And this passion of the elder hedge-hogs for getting into the
Tombs, caused by degrees a curtailing of the younger hedge-hogs. And
this falling off in the forces of the foe, singularly inspirited the
scorpions, who mustered courage, and after a series of savage battles,
in which there was a notorious amount of wool-pulling, gained the day.
And this is how 'Scorpion Cove' got its name.

"Hag Zogbaum lived in the cellar of the house with the verandas; and old
Dan Sullivan and the rats had possession of the garret. In the cellar of
this woman, whose trade was the fostering of crime in children as
destitute as myself, there was a bar and a back cellar, where as many as
twenty boys and girls slept on straw and were educated in vice. She took
me into her nursery, and I was glad to get there, for I had no other
place to go.

"In the morning we were sent out to pilfer, to deceive the credulous,
and to decoy others to the den. Some were instructed by Hag Zogbaum to
affect deaf and dumb, to plead the starving condition of our parents,
to, in a word, enlist the sympathies of the credulous with an hundred
different stories. We were all stimulated by a premium being held out to
the most successful. Some were sent out to steal pieces of iron, brass,
copper, and old junk; and these Hag Zogbaum would sell or give to the
man who kept the junk-shop in Stanton street, known as the rookery at
the corner. (This man lived with Hag Zogbaum.) We returned at night with
our booty, and received our wages in gin or beer. The unsuccessful were
set down as victims of bad luck. Now and then the old woman would call
us a miserable lot of wretches she was pestered to take care of. At one
time there were in this den of wretchedness fifteen girls from seven to
eleven years old, and seven boys under eleven--all being initiated into
the by-ways of vice and crime. Among the girls were Italians, Germans,
Irish, and--shall I say it?--Americans! It was curious to see what means
the old hag would resort to for the purpose of improving their features
after they had arrived at a certain age. She had a purpose in this; and
that purpose sprang from that traffic in depravity caused by the demands
of a depraved society, a theme on her lips continually."




CHAPTER X.

A CONTINUATION OF GEORGE MULLHOLLAND'S HISTORY.


"Having served well the offices of felons and impostors, Hag Zogbaum
would instruct her girls in the mysteries of licentiousness. When they
reached a certain age, their personal appearance was improved, and one
by one they were passed into the hands of splendidly-dressed ladies, as
we then took them to be, who paid a sum for them to Hag Zogbaum, and
took them away; and that was the last we saw of them. They had no desire
to remain in their miserable abode, and were only too glad to get away
from it. In most cases they were homeless and neglected orphans; and
knowing no better condition, fell easy victims to the snares set for
them.

"It was in this dark, cavern-like den--in this mysterious caldron of
precocious depravity, rioting unheeded in the very centre of a great
city, whose boasted wealth and civilization it might put to shame, if
indeed it were capable of shame, I first met the child of beauty, Anna
Bonard. Yes!--the Anna Bonard you now see at the house of Madame
Flamingo. At that time she was but seven years old--a child of uncommon
beauty and aptness, of delicate but well-proportioned features, of
middle stature, and a face that care might have made charming beyond
comparison. But vice hardens, corrodes, and gives a false hue to the
features. Anna said she was an orphan. How far this was true I know
not. A mystery shrouded the way in which she fell into the hands of Hag
Zogbaum. Hag Zogbaum said she got her of an apple-woman; and the
apple-woman kept a stand in West street, but never would disclose how
she came by Anna. And Mr. Tom Toddleworth, who was the chronicle of the
Points, and used to look into 'Scorpion Cove' now and then, and inquire
about Anna, as if he had a sort of interest in her, they said knew all
about her. But if he did, he always kept it a secret between himself and
Hag Zogbaum.

"She was always of a melancholy turn, used to say life was but a burden
to her--that she could see nothing in the future that did not seem dark
and tortuous. The lot into which she was cast of necessity others might
have mistaken for that which she had chosen. It was not. The hard hand
of necessity had forced her into this quicksand of death; the
indifference of a naturally generous community, robbed her of the light
of intelligence, and left her a helpless victim in the hands of this
cultivator of vice. How could she, orphan as she was called, and
unencouraged, come to be a noble and generous-hearted woman? No one
offered her the means to come up and ornament her sex; but tyrannical
society neither forgets her misfortunes nor forgives her errors. Once
seal the death-warrant of a woman's errors, and you have none to come
forward and cancel it; the tomb only removes the seal. Anna took a
liking to me, and was kind to me, and looked to me to protect her. And I
loved her, and our love grew up, and strengthened; and being alike
neglected in the world, our condition served as the strongest means of
cementing our attachment.

"Hag Zogbaum then sent Anna away to the house up the alley, in Elizabeth
street, where she sent most of her girls when they had reached the age
of eleven and twelve. Hag Zogbaum had many places for her female pupils.
The very best looking always went a while to the house in the alley; the
next best looking were sure to find their way into the hands of Miss
Brown, in Little Water street, and Miss Brown, they said, sold them to
the fairies of the South, who dressed them in velvet and gold; and the
'scrubs,' as the old woman used to call the rest, got, by some
mysterious process, into the hands of Paddy Pie and Tim Branahan, who
kept shantees in Orange street.

"Anna had been away some time, and Mr. Tom Toddleworth had several times
been seen to look in and inquire for her. Mr. Toddleworth said he had a
ripping bid for her. At that time I was ignorant of its meaning. Harry
Rooney and me were sent to the house in Elizabeth street, one morning,
to bring Anna and another girl home. The house was large, and had an air
of neatness about it that contrasted strangely with the den in 'Scorpion
Cove.' We rang the bell and inquired for the girls, who, after waiting
nearly an hour, were sent down to us, clean and neatly dressed. In Anna
the change was so great, that though I had loved her, and thought of her
day and night during her absence, I scarce recognized her. So glad did
she seem to see me that she burst into tears, flung her arms about my
neck, and kissed me with the fondness of a sister. Then she recounted
with childlike enthusiasm the kind treatment she had received at the
house of Madame Harding (for such it was called), between whom and Hag
Zogbaum there was carried on a species of business I am not inclined to
designate here. Two kind and splendidly-dressed ladies, Anna said,
called to see them nearly every day, and were going to take them away,
that they might live like fairies all the rest of their lives.

"When we got home, two ladies were waiting at the den. It was not the
first time we had seen them at the den. Anna recognized them as the
ladies she had seen at Madame Harding's. One was the woman who so kindly
gave me the shilling in the market, when I was cold and hungry. A
lengthy whispering took place between Hag Zogbaum and the ladies, and we
were ordered into the back cellar. I knew the whispering was about Anna;
and watching through the boards I heard the Hag say Anna was fourteen
and nothing less, and saw one of the ladies draw from her purse numerous
pieces of gold, which were slipped into her hand. In a few minutes more
I saw poor little Anna follow her up the steps that led into 'Scorpion
Cove.' When we were released Hag was serving ragged and dejected-looking
men with gin and beer. Anna, she said when I inquired, had gone to a
good home in the country. I loved her ardently, and being lonesome was
not content with the statement of the old woman. I could not read, but
had begun to think for myself, and something told me all was not right.
For weeks and months I watched at the house in Leonard street, into
which I had followed the woman who gave me the shilling. But I neither
saw her nor the woman. Elegant carriages, and elegantly-dressed men
drove to and from the door, and passed in and out of the house, and the
house seemed to have a deal of fashionable customers, and that was all I
knew of it then.

"As I watched one night, a gentleman came out of the house, took me by
the arm and shook me, said I was a loitering vagrant, that he had seen
me before, and having a suspicious look he would order the watch to lock
me up. He inquired where my home was; and when I told him it was in
'Scorpion Cove,' he replied he didn't know where that was. I told him it
wasn't much of a home, and he said I ought to have a better one. It was
all very well to say so; but with me the case was different. That night
I met Tom Farley, who was glad to see me, and told how he got out of the
lock-up, and what he thought of the lock-up, and the jolly old Judge who
sent him to the lock-up, and who he saw in the lock-up, and what
mischief was concocted in the lock-up, and what he got to eat in the
lock-up, and how the lock-up wasn't so bad a place after all.

"The fact was I was inclined to think the lock-up not so bad a place to
get into, seeing how they gave people something good to eat, and clothes
to wear. Tom and me went into business together. We sold _Heralds_ and
Sunday papers, and made a good thing of it, and shared our earnings, and
got enough to eat and some clothes. I took up my stand in Centre Market,
and Tom took up his at Peck Slip. At night we would meet, count our
earnings, and give them to Mr. Crogan, who kept the cellar in Water
street, where we slept. I left Hag Zogbaum, who we got to calling the
wizard. She got all we could earn or pilfer, and we got nothing for our
backs but a few rags, and unwholesome fish and beer for our bellies. I
thought of Anna day and night; I hoped to meet in Centre Market the
woman who took her away.

"I said no one ever looked in at the den in 'Scorpion Cove,' but there
was a kind little man, with sharp black eyes, and black hair, and an
earnest olive-colored face, and an earnester manner about him, who used
to look in now and then, talk kindly to us, and tell us he wished he had
a home for us all, and was rich enough to give us all enough to eat. He
hated Hag Zogbaum, and Hag Zogbaum hated him; but we all liked him
because he was kind to us, and used to shake his head, and say he would
do something for us yet. Hag Zogbaum said he was always meddling with
other people's business. At other times a man would come along and throw
tracts in at the gate of the alley. We were ignorant of what they were
intended for, and used to try to sell them at the Gibraltars. Nobody
wanted them, and nobody could read at the den, so Hag Zogbaum lighted
the fire with them, and that was the end of them.

"Well, I sold papers for nearly two years, and learned to read a little
by so doing, and got up in the world a little; and being what was called
smart, attracted the attention of a printer in Nassau street, who took
me into his office, and did well by me. My mind was bent on getting a
trade. I knew I could do well for myself with a trade to lean upon. Two
years I worked faithfully at the printer's, was approaching manhood, and
with the facilities it afforded me had not failed to improve my mind and
get a tolerable good knowledge of the trade. But the image of Anna, and
the singular manner in which she disappeared, made me unhappy.

"On my return from dinner one day I met in Broadway the lady who took
Anna away. The past and its trials flashed across my brain, and I turned
and followed her--found that her home was changed to Mercer street, and
this accounted for my fruitless watching in Leonard street.

"The love of Anna, that had left its embers smouldering in my bosom,
quickened, and seemed to burn with redoubled ardor. It was my first and
only love; the sufferings of our childhood had made it lasting. My very
emotion rose to action as I saw the woman I knew took her away. My
anxiety to know her fate had no bounds. Dressing myself up as
respectably as it was possible with my means, I took advantage of a dark
and stormy night in the month of November to call at the house in Mercer
street, into which I had traced the lady. I rung the bell; a
sumptuously-dressed woman came to the door, which opened into a
gorgeously-decorated hall. She looked at me with an inquiring eye and
disdainful frown, inquired who I was and what I wanted. I confess I was
nervous, for the dazzling splendor of the mansion produced in me a
feeling of awe rather than admiration. I made known my mission as best I
could; the woman said no such person had ever resided there. In that
moment of disappointment I felt like casting myself away in despair. The
associations of Scorpion Cove, of the house of the Nine Nations, of the
Rookery, of Paddy Pie's--or any other den in that desert of death that
engulphs the Points, seemed holding out a solace for the melancholy that
weighed me down. But when I got back into Broadway my resolution gained
strength, and with it I wept over the folly of my thoughts.

"Led by curiosity, and the air of comfort pervading the well-furnished
room, and the piously-disposed appearance of the persons who passed in
and out, I had several times looked in at the house of the 'Foreign
Missions,' as we used to call it. A man with a good-natured face used to
sit in the chair, and a wise-looking little man in spectacles (the
Secretary) used to sit a bit below him, and a dozen or two
well-disposed persons of both sexes, with sharp and anxious
countenances, used to sit round in a half circle, listening. The
wise-looking man in the spectacles would, on motion of some one present,
read a long report, which was generally made up of a list of donations
and expenditures for getting up a scheme to evangelize the world, and
get Mr. Singleton Spyke off to Antioch. It seemed to me as if a deal of
time and money was expended on Mr. Singleton Spyke, and yet Mr. Spyke
never got off to Antioch. When the man of the spectacles got through
reading the long paper, and the good-natured man in the chair got
through explaining that the heavy amount of twenty-odd thousand dollars
had been judiciously expended for the salary of officers of the society,
and the getting Brothers Spurn and Witherspoon off to enlighten the
heathen, Brother Singleton Spyke's mission would come up. Every one
agreed that there ought to be no delay in getting Brother Spyke off to
Antioch; but a small deficiency always stood in the way. And Brother
Spyke seemed spiked to this deficiency; for notwithstanding Mrs. Slocum,
who was reckoned the strongest-minded woman, and best business-man of
the society, always made speeches in favor of Brother Spyke and his
mission (a special one), he never got off to Antioch.

"Feeling forlorn, smarting under disappointment, and undecided where to
go after I left the house in Mercer street, I looked in at the house of
the 'Foreign Missions.' Mrs. Slocum, as I had many times before seen
her, was warmly contesting a question concerning Brother Spyke, with the
good-natured man in the chair. It was wrong, she said, so much money
should be expended, and Brother Spyke not got off to Antioch. So leaving
them debating Mr. Spyke's mission to Antioch, I proceeded back to the
house in Mercer street, and inquired for the landlady of the house. The
landlady, the woman that opened the door said, was engaged. The door was
shut in my face, and I turned away more wounded in my feelings than
before. Day and night I contemplated some plan by which to ascertain
Anna's place of abode, her pursuit in life, her wants. When we parted
she could neither write nor read: I had taken writing lessons, by which
I could communicate tolerably well, while my occupation afforded me the
means of improvement. A few weeks passed (I continued to watch the
house), and I recognized her one afternoon, by her black, floating hair,
sitting at a second-story window of the house in Mercer street, her back
toward me. The sight was like electricity on my feelings; a transport of
joy bore away my thoughts. I gazed, and continued to gaze upon the
object, throwing, as it were, new passion into my soul. But it turned,
and there was a changed face, a face more lovely, looking eagerly into a
book. Looking eagerly into a book did not betray one who could not read.
But there was that in my heart that prompted me to look on the favorable
side of the doubt--to try a different expedient in gaining admittance to
the house. When night came, I assumed a dress those who look on
mechanics as vulgar people, would have said became a gentleman; and
approaching the house, gained easy admittance. As I was about entering
the great parlors, a familiar but somewhat changed voice at the top of
the circling stairs that led from the hall caught my ear. I paused,
listened, became entranced with suspense. Again it resounded--again my
heart throbbed with joy. It was Anna's voice, so soft and musical. The
woman who opened the door turned from me, and attempted to hush it. But
Anna seemed indifferent to the admonition, for she tripped buoyantly
down stairs, accompanying a gentleman to the door. I stood before her, a
changed person. Her recognition of me was instantaneous. Her color
changed, her lips quivered, her eyes filled with tears, her very soul
seemed fired with emotions she had no power to resist. 'George
Mullholland!' she exclaimed, throwing her arms about my neck, kissing
me, and burying her head in my bosom, and giving vent to her feelings in
tears and quickened sobs--'how I have thought of you, watched for you,
and hoped for the day when we would meet again and be happy. Oh, George!
George! how changed everything seems since we parted! It seems a long
age, and yet our sufferings, and the fondness for each other that was
created in that suffering, freshens in the mind. Dear, good George--my
protector!' she continued, clinging to me convulsively. I took her in my
arms (the scene created no little excitement in the house) and bore her
away to her chamber, which was chastely furnished, displaying a correct
taste, and otherwise suited to a princess. Having gained her presence of
mind, and become calm, she commenced relating what had occurred since we
parted at Scorpion Cove. I need not relate it at length here, for it was
similar in character to what might be told by a thousand others if they
were not powerless. For months she had been confined to the house, her
love of dress indulged to the furthest extent, her mind polluted and
initiated into the mysteries of refined licentiousness, her personal
appearance scrupulously regarded, and made to serve the object of which
she was a victim in the hands of the hostess, who made her the worse
than slave to a banker of great respectability in Wall street. This
good man and father was well down in the vale of years, had a mansion on
Fifth Avenue, and an interesting and much-beloved family. He was, in
addition, a prominent member of the commercial community; but his
example to those more ready to imitate the errors of men in high
positions, than to improve by the examples of the virtuous poor, was not
what it should be. Though a child of neglect, and schooled to
licentiousness under the very eye of a generous community, her natural
sensibility recoiled at the thought that she was a mere object of prey
to the passions of one she could not love.

"She resolved to remain in this condition no longer, and escaped to
Savannah with a young man whose acquaintance she had made at the house
in Mercer street. For a time they lived at a respectable hotel, as
husband and wife. But her antecedents got out, and they got notice to
leave. The same fate met them in Charleston, to which city they removed.
Her antecedents seemed to follow her wherever she went, like haunting
spirits seeking her betrayal. She was homeless; and without a home there
was nothing open to her but that vortex of licentiousness the world
seemed pointing her to. Back she went to the house in Mercer street--was
glad to get back; was at least free from the finger of scorn.
Henceforward she associated with various friends, who sought her because
of her transcendent charms. She had cultivated a natural intelligence,
and her manners were such as might have become one in better society.
But her heart's desire was to leave the house. I took her from it; and
for a time I was happy to find that the contaminating weeds of vice had
not overgrown the more sensitive buds of virtue.

"I provided a small tenement in Centre street, such as my means would
afford, and we started in the world, resolved to live respectably. But
what had maintained me respectably was now found inadequate to the
support of us both. Life in a house of sumptuous vice had rendered Anna
incapable of adapting herself to the extreme of economy now forced upon
us. Anna was taken sick; I was compelled to neglect my work, and was
discharged. Discontent, embarrassment, and poverty resulted. I struggled
to live for six months; but my prospects, my hopes of gaining an honest
living, were gone. I had no money to join the society, and the trade
being dull, could get nothing to do. Fate seemed driving us to the last
stage of distress. One by one our few pieces of furniture, our clothing,
and the few bits of jewelry Anna had presented her at the house in
Mercer street, found their way to the sign of the Three Martyrs. The man
of the eagle face would always lend something on them, and that
something relieved us for the time. I many times thought, as I passed
the house of the Foreign Missions in Centre street, where there was such
an air of comfort, that if Mrs. Abijah Slocum, and the good-natured man
who sat in the chair, and the wise little man in the spectacles, would
condescend to look in at our little place, and instead of always talking
about getting Mr. Singleton Spyke off to Antioch, take pity on our
destitution, what a relief it would be. It would have made more hearts
happy than Mr. Spyke, notwithstanding the high end of his mission, could
have softened in ten years at Antioch.

"Necessity, not inclination, forced Anna back into the house in Mercer
street, when I became her friend, her transient protector. Her hand was
as ready to bestow as her heart was warm and generous. She gave me
money, and was kind to me; but the degraded character of my position
caused me to despond, to yield myself a victim to insidious vice, to
become the associate of men whose only occupation was that of gambling
and 'roping-in' unsuspecting persons. I was not long in becoming an
efficient in the arts these men practiced on the unwary. We used to meet
at the 'Subterranean,' in Church street, and there concoct our mode of
operations. And from this centre went forth, daily, men who lived by
gambling, larceny, picking pockets, counterfeiting, and passing
counterfeit money. I kept Anna ignorant of my associations. Nevertheless
I was forced to get money, for I found her affections becoming
perverted. At times her manner towards me was cold, and I sought to
change it with money.

"While thus pursuing a life so precarious and exciting, I used to look
in at the 'Empire,' in Broadway, to see whom I could 'spot,' as we
called it at the 'Subterranean.' And it was here I met poor Tom Swiggs,
distracted and giving himself up to drink, in the fruitless search after
the girl of his love, from whom he had been separated, as he said, by
his mother. He had loved the girl, and the girl returned his love with
all the sincerity and ardor of her soul. But she was poor, and of poor
parents. And as such people were reckoned nothing in Charleston, his
mother locked him up in jail, and she was got out of the way. Tom opened
his heart to me, said foul means had been resorted to, and the girl had
thrown herself away, because, while he was held in close confinement,
falsehoods had been used to make her believe he had abandoned her. To
have her an outcast on his account, to have her leading the life of an
abandoned woman, and that with the more galling belief that he had
forsaken her, was more than he could bear, and he was sinking under the
burden. Instead of making him an object of my criminal profession, his
story so touched my feelings that I became his protector, saw him to his
lodgings in Green street, and ultimately got him on board a vessel bound
to Charleston.

"Not many weeks after this, I, being moneyless, was the principal of a
plot by which nearly a thousand dollars was got of the old man in Wall
street, who had been Anna's friend; and fearing it might get out, I
induced her to accompany me to Charleston, where she believed I had a
prospect of bettering my condition, quitting my uncertain mode of
living, and becoming a respectable man. Together we put up at the
Charleston Hotel. But necessity again forced me to reveal to her my
circumstances, and the real cause of my leaving New York. Her hopes of
shaking off the taint of her former life seemed blasted; but she bore
the shock with resignation, and removed with me to the house of Madame
Flamingo, where we for a time lived privately. But the Judge sought her
out, followed her with the zeal of a knight, and promised, if she would
forsake me, to be her protector; to provide for her and maintain her
like a lady during her life. What progress he has made in carrying out
his promise you have seen. The English baronet imposed her upon the St.
Cecilia, and the Judge was the first to betray her."




CHAPTER XI.

IN WHICH THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO MR. ABSALOM McARTHUR.


You must know, reader, that King street is our Boulevard of fashion; and
though not the handsomest street in the world, nor the widest, nor the
best paved, nor the most celebrated for fine edifices, we so cherish its
age and dignity that we would not for the world change its provincial
name, or molest one of the hundred old tottering buildings that daily
threaten a dissolution upon its pavement, or permit a wench of doubtful
blood to show her head on the "north sidewalk" during promenade hours.
We are, you see, curiously nice in matters of color, and we should be.
You may not comprehend the necessity for this scrupulous regard to
caste; others do not, so you are not to blame for your ignorance of the
customs of an atmosphere you have only breathed through novels written
by steam. We don't (and you wouldn't) like to have our wives meet our
slightly-colored mistresses. And we are sure you would not like to have
your highly-educated and much-admired daughters meet those cream-colored
material evidences of your folly--called by Northern "fanatics" their
half-sisters! You would not! And your wives, like sensible women, as our
wives and daughters are, would, if by accident they did meet them, never
let you have a bit of sleep until you sent them to old Graspum's
flesh-market, had them sold, and the money put safely into their hands.
We do these things just as you would; and our wives being philosophers,
and very fashionable withal, put the money so got into fine dresses, and
a few weeks' stay at some very select watering-place in the North. If
your wife be very accomplished, (like ours,) and your daughters much
admired for their beauty, (like ours,) they will do as ours did--put
wisely the cash got for their detestable relatives into a journey of
inspection over Europe. So, you see, we keep our fashionable side of
King street; and woe be to the shady mortal that pollutes its bricks!

Mr. Absalom McArthur lives on the unfashionable side of this street, in
a one-story wooden building, with a cottage roof, covered with thick,
black moss, and having two great bow windows, and a very lean door,
painted black, in front. It is a rummy old house to look at, for the
great bow windows are always ornamented with old hats, which Mr.
McArthur makes supply the place of glass; and the house itself,
notwithstanding it keeps up the dignity of a circular window over the
door, reminds one of that valiant and very notorious characteristic of
the State, for it has, during the last twenty or more years, threatened
(but never done it) to tumble upon the unfashionable pavement, just in
like manner as the State has threatened (but never done it!) to tumble
itself out of our unfashionable Union. We are a great people, you see;
but having the impediment of the Union in the way of displaying our
might, always stand ready to do what we never intended to do. We speak
in that same good-natured sense and metaphor used by our politicians,
(who are become very distinguished in the refined arts of fighting and
whiskey-drinking,) when they call for a rope to put about the neck

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