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Justice in the By-Ways, a Tale of Life

by F. Colburn Adams · English · Gutenberg #4958 · 711,027 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Justice in the By-Ways, a Tale of Life

Author: F. Colburn Adams


        
Release date: January 1, 2004 [eBook #4958]
                Most recently updated: January 11, 2026

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JUSTICE IN THE BY-WAYS, A TALE OF LIFE ***




JUSTICE IN THE BY-WAYS.

A TALE OF LIFE.

BY F. COLBURN ADAMS,

AUTHOR
OF “OUR WORLD,” ETC., ETC., ETC.


“A rebellion or an invasion alarms,
And puts the people upon its defence;
But a corruption of principles
Works its ruin more slowly perhaps,
But more surely.”

NEW YORK:
LONDON:
1856.




Contents


 Preface
 CHAPTER I.—Tom Swiggs’ Seventh Introduction on board of the Brig
Standfast
 CHAPTER II.—Madame Flamingo—Her Distinguished Patrons, and her very
respectable House
 CHAPTER III.—In which the Reader is presented with a Varied Picture
 CHAPTER IV.—A few Reflections on the Cure of Vice
 CHAPTER V.—In which Mr. Snivel, commonly called the Accommodation Man, is
introduced, and what takes place between him and Mrs. Swiggs.
 CHAPTER VI.—Containing Sundry Matters appertaining to this History
 CHAPTER VII.—In which is seen a Commingling of Citizens
 CHAPTER VIII.—What takes place between George Mullholland and Mr.
Snivel
 CHAPTER IX.—In which a Gleam of Light is shed on the History of Anna
Bonard
 CHAPTER X.—A Continuation of George Mullholland’s History
 CHAPTER XI.—In which the Reader is introduced to Mr. Absalom McArthur
 CHAPTER XII.—In which are Matters the Reader may have anticipated
 CHAPTER XIII.—Mrs. Swiggs comes to the Rescue of the House of the Foreign
Missions
 CHAPTER XIV.—Mr. McArthur makes a Discovery
 CHAPTER XV.—What Madame Flamingo wants to be
 CHAPTER XVI.—In which Tom Swiggs gains his Liberty, and what befalls
him
 CHAPTER XVII.—In which there is an Interesting Meeting
 CHAPTER XVIII.—Anna Bonard seeks an Interview with the Antiquary
 CHAPTER XIX.—A Secret Interview
 CHAPTER XX.—Lady Swiggs encounters Difficulties on her Arrival in New
York
 CHAPTER XXI.—Mr. Snivel pursues his Search for the Vote-Cribber
 CHAPTER XXII.—Mrs. Swiggs falls upon a Modern Heathen World
 CHAPTER XXIII.—In which the very best Intentions are seen to fail
 CHAPTER XXIV.—Mr. Snivel advises George Mullholland how to make Strong
Love
 CHAPTER XXV.—A Slight Change in the Picture
 CHAPTER XXVI.—In which a High Functionary is made to play a Singular
Part
 CHAPTER XXVII.—The House of the Nine Nations, and what may be seen in
it
 CHAPTER XXVIII.—In which is presented Another Picture of the House of the
Nine Nations
 CHAPTER XXIX.—In which may be seen a few of our Common Evils
 CHAPTER XXX.—Containing Various Things appertaining to this History
 CHAPTER XXXI.—The Keno Den, and what may be seen in it
 CHAPTER XXXII.—In which a State of Society is slighty Revealed
 CHAPTER XXXIII.—In which there is a Singular Revelation
 CHAPTER XXXIV.—The Two Pictures
 CHAPTER XXXV.—In which a Little Light is shed upon the Character of our
Chivalry
 CHAPTER XXXVI.—In which a Law is seen to serve Base Purposes
 CHAPTER XXXVII.—A Short Chapter of Ordinary Events
 CHAPTER XXXVIII.—A Story without which this History would be found
wanting
 CHAPTER XXXIX.—A Story with many Counterparts
 CHAPTER XL.—In which the Law is seen to Conflict with our Cherished
Chivalry
 CHAPTER XLI.—In which Justice is seen to be very accommodating
 CHAPTER XLII.—In which Some Light is thrown on the Plot of this
History
 CHAPTER XLIII.—In which is revealed the One Error that brought so much
Suffering upon many
 CHAPTER XLIV.—In which is recorded Events the Reader may not have
Expected
 CHAPTER XLV.—Another Shade of the Picture
 CHAPTER XLVI.—The Soul may gain Strength in a dreary Cell
 CHAPTER XLVII.—In which is a Happy Meeting, and something Pleasing
 CHAPTER XLVIII.—A Few Words With the Reader




PREFACE.


Prefaces, like long sermons to fashionable congregations, are
distasteful to most readers, and in no very high favor with us. A deep
interest in the welfare of South Carolina, and the high esteem in which
we held the better, and more sensible class of her citizens, prompted
us to sit down in Charleston, some four years ago (as a few of our
friends are aware), and write this history. The malady of her chivalry
had then broken out, and such was its virulence that very serious
consequences were apprehended. We had done something, and were unwise
enough to think we could do more, to stay its spread. We say unwise,
inasmuch as we see, and regret that we do see, the malady breaking out
anew, in a more virulent type—one which threatens dire consequences to
this glorious Union, and bids fair soon to see the Insane Hospital of
South Carolina crammed with her mad-politicians.

Our purpose, the reader will not fail to discover, was a high moral
one. He must overlook the means we have called to our aid in some
instances, remember that the spirit of the work is in harmony with a
just sense of duty to a people among whom we have long resided, and
whose follies deserve our pity, perhaps, rather than our condemnation.
To remain blind to their own follies, is the sin of weak States; and we
venture nothing when we say that it would be difficult to find a people
more dragged down by their own ignorance than are the South
Carolinians. And yet, strange as it may seem, no people are more
energetic in laying claim to a high intellectual standard. For a
stranger to level his shafts against the very evils they themselves
most deprecate, is to consign himself an exile worthy only of that
domestic garment[1] in which all who think and write too freely, are
clothed and sent away.

  [1] Tar and feathers.

And though the sentiments we have put forth in this work may not be in
fashion with our Southern friends, they will give us credit for at
least one thing—picturing in truthful colors the errors that, by their
own confessions, are sapping the very foundations of their society. Our
aim is to suggest reforms, and in carrying it out we have consulted no
popular prejudice, enlarged upon no enormities to please the lover of
tragedy, regarded neither beauty nor the art of novel making, nor
created suffering heroines to excite an outpouring of sorrow and tears.
The incidents of our story, which at best is but a mere thread, are
founded in facts; and these facts we have so modified as to make them
acceptable to the reader, while shielding ourself from the charge of
exaggeration. And, too, we are conscious that our humble influence,
heretofore exerted, has contributed to the benefit of a certain class
in Charleston, and trust that in this instance it may have a wider
field.

Three years and upwards, then, has the MS. of this work laid in the
hands of a Philadelphia publisher, who was kind enough to say more good
things of it than it deserved, and only (as he said, and what
publishers say no one ever thinks of doubting) regretted that fear of
offending his Southern customers, who were exceedingly stiff in some
places, and tender in others, prevented him publishing it. Thankful for
the very flattering but undeserved reception two works from our pen
(both written at a subsequent period) met, in England as well as this
country, we resolved a few weeks ago to drag the MS. from the obscurity
in which it had so long remained, and having resigned it to the rude
hands of our printer, let it pass to the public. But there seemed
another difficulty in the way: the time, every one said, and every one
ought to know, was a hazardous one for works of a light character.
Splash & Dash, my old publishers, (noble fellows), had no less than
three Presidents on their shoulders, and could not be expected to take
up anything “light” for several months. Brick, of the very respectable
but somewhat slow firm of Brick & Brother, a firm that had singular
scruples about publishing a work not thickly sprinkled with the
author’s knowledge of French, had one candidate by the neck, and had
made a large bet that he could carry him into the “White House” with a
rush, while the junior partner was deeply immersed in the study of
Greek. Puff, of the firm of Puff & Bluff, a house that had recently
moved into the city to teach the art of blowing books into the market,
was foaming over with his two Presidential candidates, and thought the
public could not be got to read a book without at least one candidate
in it. It was not prudent to give the reading world more than a book of
travels or so, said Munch, of the house of Munch & Muddle, until the
candidates for the White House were got nicely out of the way. Indeed,
there were good reasons for being alarmed, seeing that the publishing
world had given up literature, and, following the example set by the
New York Corporation, taken itself very generally to the trade of
President-making. Wilkins, whose publications were so highly
respectable that they invariably remained on his shelves, and had in
more than one instance become so weighty that they had dragged the
house down, thought the pretty feet of some few of the female
characters in this volume a little too much exposed to suit the
delicate sensibilities of his fair readers. Applejack, than whose taste
none could be more exquisite, and who only wanted to feel a manuscript
to tell whether it would do to publish it, made it a point, he said,
not to publish novels with characters in them that would drink to
excess. As for the very fast firm of Blowers & Windspin, celebrated for
flooding the country with cheap books of a very tragic character, why,
it had work enough on hand for the present. Blowers was blessed with a
wife of a literary turn of mind, which was very convenient, inasmuch as
all the novels with which the house astonished the world were submitted
to her, and what she could not read she was sure to pass a favorable
judgment upon. The house had in press four highly worked up novels of
Mrs. Blowers’ own, Mr. Blowers said,—all written in the very short
space of six weeks. She was a remarkable woman, and extraordinary
clever at novels, Blowers concluded with an air of magnificent
self-satisfaction. These works, having been written by steam, Mr.
Windspin, the unior partner, was expected to put into the market with a
very large amount of high pressure.

Our friends in South Carolina, we knew, would be anxious to see what we
had written of them in this volume, and we have made and shall continue
to make it a point to gratify them: hence our haste in this instance.
Conscious, too, that life is the great schoolmaster, and that public
taste is neither to be regulated by a few, nor kept at any one point,
we caught up a publisher with only one candidate for the “White House”
on his shoulders, and with his assistance, now respectfully submit this
our humble effort.

NEW YORK, Sept., 1856.




JUSTICE IN THE BY-WAYS.




CHAPTER I.
TOM SWIGGS’ SEVENTH INTRODUCTION ON BOARD OF THE BRIG STANDFAST.


It is in the spring of 1847 this history commences.

“Steady a bit! Here I am, boys, turned up again—a subject of this moral
reform school, of moral old Charleston. If my good old mother thinks
it’ll reform a cast-off remnant of human patchwork like me, I’ve
nothing to say in protest. Yes, here I am, comrades (poor Tom Swiggs,
as you used to call me), with rum my victor, and modern vengeance
hastening my destruction.” This is the exclamation of poor Tom Swiggs
(as his jail companions are pleased to call him), who, in charge of two
officers of the law, neither of whom are inclined to regard him with
sympathy, is being dragged back again to the Charleston jail. The
loathsome wreck of a once respectable man, he staggers into the
corridor, utters a wild shriek as the iron gate closes upon him, and
falls headlong upon the floor of the vestibule, muttering,
incoherently, “there is no hope for one like me.” And the old walls
re-echo his lamentation.

“His mother, otherwise a kind sort of woman, sends him here. She
believes it will work his reform. I pity her error—for it is an error
to believe reform can come of punishment, or that virtue may be
nurtured among vice.” Thus responds the brusque but kind-hearted old
jailer, who view swith an air of compassion his new comer, as he lays,
a forlorn mass, exposed to the gaze of the prisoners gathering eagerly
about him.

The dejected man gives a struggle, raises himself to his haunches, and
with his coarse, begrimed hands resting on his knees, returns the
salutation of several of his old friends. “This, boys, is the seventh
time,” he pursues, as if his scorched brain were tossed on a sea of
fire, “and yet I’m my mother’s friend. I love her still—yes, I love her
still!” and he shakes his head, as his bleared eyes fill with tears.
“She is my mother,” he interpolates, and again gives vent to his
frenzy: “fellows! bring me brandy—whiskey—rum—anything to quench this
flame that burns me up. Bring it, and when I’m free of this place of
torment, I will stand enough for you all to swim in.”

“Shut your whiskey-pipe. You don’t appreciate the respectability of the
company you’ve got among. I’ve heard of you,” ejaculates a voice in the
crowd of lookers-on.

“What of a citizen are you?” inquires Tom, his head dropping sleepily.

“A vote-cribber—Milman Mingle by name; and, like yourself, in for
formal reform,” retorts the voice. And the burly figure of a red,
sullen-faced man, comes forward, folds his arms, and looks for some
minutes with an air of contempt upon the poor inebriate.

“You’re no better than you ought to be,” incoherently continues Tom,
raising his glassy eyes as if to sight his seemingly querulous
companion.

“Better, at all events, than you,” emphatically replies the man. “I’m
only in for cribbing voters; which, be it known, is commonly called a
laudable enterprise just before our elections come off, and a henious
offence when office-seekers have gained their ends. But what use is it
discussing the affairs of State with a thing like you?” The
vote-cribber, inclined to regard the new-comer as an inferior mortal,
shrugs his shoulders, and walks away, contemplatively humming an air.

“If here ain’t Tom Swiggs again!” exclaims a lean, parchment-faced
prisoner, pressing eagerly his way through the circle of bystanders,
and raising his hands as he beholds the wreck upon the floor.

“Fate, and my mother, have ordered it so,” replies Tom, recognizing the
voice, and again imploring the jailer to bring him some brandy to
quench the fires of his brain. The thought of his mother floated
uppermost, and recurred brightest to the wandering imagination of this
poor outcast.

“There’s no rum here, old bloat. The mother having you for a son is to
be pitied—you are to be pitied, too; but the jail is bankrupt, without
a shilling to relieve you in the liquor line,” interposes another, as
one by one the prisoners begin to leave and seek their several
retreats.

“That breath of yours,” interrupts the vote-cribber, who, having
returned, stands regarding the outcast man with singular interest,
“would make drunk the whole jail. A week in ‘Mount Rascal’ The upper
story used for the confinement of felons. will be necessary to
transmute you, as they call it, into something Christian. On ‘the
Mount’ you will have a chance to philosophize—mollify the temperature
of your nervous system-which is out of fix just now.”

There is an inert aristocracy, a love of distinction, among the lowest
dregs of society, as there is also a love of plush and other
insignificant tawdry among our more wealthy republicans. Few would have
thought of one inebriate affecting superiority over another, (the
vote-cribber was an inebriate, as we shall show,) but so it was,
nevertheless.

“I own up,” rejoins Tom, “I own up; I love my mother, and am out of
sorts. You may call me a mass of filth—what you please!”

“Never mind; I am your friend, Tom,” interrupts the brusque old jailer,
stooping down and taking him gently by the arm. “Good may come of the
worst filth of nature—evil may come of what seemeth the best; and trees
bearing sound pippins may have come of rotten cores. Cheer up!”

The cool and unexpected admonition of the “vote-cribber” leaves a deep
impression in Tom’s feelings. He attempts, heaving a sigh, to rise, but
has not strength, and falls languidly back upon the floor. His
countenance, for a few moments, becomes dark and desponding; but the
kind words that fall from the jailer’s lips inspire him with
confidence; and, turning partly on his side, he thrusts his begrimed
hands into a pair of greasy pockets, whistling “Yankee Doodle,” with
great composure.

The jailer glances about him for assistance, saying it will be
necessary to get him up and carry him to his cell.

“To a cell—a cell—a cell!” reiterates the inebriate. “Well, as the
legal gentry say,” he continues, “I’ll enter a ‘non-contender.’ I only
say this by way of implication, to show my love for the fellow who
gathers fees by making out writs on my account.”

In reply to a question from the jailer, he says they mistake Tom
Swiggs, if they think he has no pride left.

“After all, there’s something more in you than I thought, Tom. Give us
your hand,” says the vote-cribber, extending cordially his hand, as if
a change for the better had come over him, and grasping firmly that of
the inebriate. Raising his besotted head, Tom gazes distrustfully at
the cribber, as if questioning his sincerity. “I am not dead to shame,”
he mutters, struggling at the same time to suppress his emotions.

“There are, Tom,” continues the cribber, playfully, “two claims on
you—two patent claims! (He lets go the inebriate’s hand, and begins
teasing his long, red beard.) And, are you disposed to come out on the
square, in the liquor line, you may redeem yourself—”

“Name ’em!” interposed Tom, stopping short in his tune.

“The gentleman commonly called Mister Jones, and a soap-chandler, are
contesting a claim upon you. The one wants your body, the other your
clothes. Now, as I am something of a lawyer, having had large dealings
in elections, I may say, as a friend, that it is only a question of
time, so far as you are concerned. Take my advice, then, and cheat
both, by selling out, in advance. The student and the janitor pay good
prices for such things as you. Give the last-named worthy a
respondentia bond on yourself, redeemable before death, or resign the
body after, (any lawyer will make the lien valid,) and the advance will
produce floods of whiskey. Come out, Tom, like a hero, on the square.”

An outcast, hurled deep into the gulf of despair, and surrounded by
victims of poverty and votaries of crime, the poor inebriate has yet
left him one lingering spark of pride. As if somewhat revived, he
scrambles to his feet, staggers into the room of a poor debtor, on the
left of the long, sombre aisle, and drawing from his pocket a ten-cent
piece, throws it upon the table, with an air of great importance.

“I am not moneyless,” he exclaims—“not I!” and he staggers to the great
chimney-place, rebounding to the floor, saying, “Take that—bring her
in—quench my burning thirst!”

Tom is the only surviving, and now the outcast, member of a somewhat
respectable family, that has moved in the better walks of society. His
mother, being scrupulous of her position in society, and singularly
proud withal, has reared and educated her son in idleness, and
ultimately slights and discards him, because he, as she alleges, sought
society inferior to his position and her dignity. In his better days he
had been erect of person, and even handsome; but the thraldom of the
destroyer has brought him to the dust, a pitiable wreck.

Tom has seen thirty summers, presents a full, rounded figure, and
stands some five feet ten. He wears an old brown coat, cut after the
fashion of a surtout, that might have fitted him, he says, when he was
a man. But it has lost the right cuff, the left flap, and a part of the
collar; the nefarious moths, too, have made a sieve of its back. His
trowsers are of various colors, greasy down the sides, ragged at the
bottoms, and revealing two encrusted ancles, with feet stuck into old
shoes, turned under at the heels for convenience sake. A remark from
the cribber touches his pride, and borrowing a few pins he commences
pinning together the shattered threads of his nether garment. A
rope-yarn secured about his waist gives a sailor-like air to his
outfit. But, notwithstanding Tom affects the trim of the craft, the
skilled eye can easily detect the deception; for the craftsman, even
under a press of head sail, preserves a becoming rig.

Indeed, Tom might have attempted without effect, during his natural
life, to transform himself into a sailor. The destroyer was his victor;
the inner man was but a reflex of the outer. He pulled an old cloth cap
over his face, which was immersed in a massive black beard, bordering
two red, swollen cheeks; and with his begrimed hands he rubbed lustily
his inflamed eyes—once brown, large, and earnest—now glassy and sunken.

“I’m all square, ain’t I?” he inquires, looking with vacant stare into
the faces of those who tease him with facetious remarks, then scans his
haberdashery. There yet remains something displeasing to him. His sense
of taste is at stake. This something proves to be a sooty striped
shirt, open in front, and disclosing the remains of a red flannel
under-garment. Every few minutes will he, as if touched with a sense of
shame, wriggle his shoulders, and pull forward the wreck of his
collarless coat, apparently much annoyed that it fails to cover the
breastwork of his distress.

Again he thrusts his hands into his pockets, and with an air of
apparent satisfaction, struts twice or thrice across the dingy room, as
if he would show how far he has gained his equilibrium. “I shall go
straight mad; yes, mad, if the whiskey be not brought in,” he pursues,
stopping short in one of his sallies, and with a rhetorical flourish,
pointing at the piece of silver he so exultingly tossed upon the table.
As if his brain were again seized by the destroyer’s flame, his
countenance becomes livid, his eyes glare wildly upon each object near
him; then he draws himself into a tragic attitude, contorts hideously
his more hideous face, throws his cap scornfully to the ground, and
commences tearing from his head the matted black hair that confusedly
covers it. “If my mother thinks this a fit place for me—” He pauses in
the middle of his sentence, gives an imploring stare at his companions,
shakes and hangs down his head; then his brain reels, and his frame
trembles, and like a lifeless mass he falls to the floor.

“I’m gone now—gone—gone—gone!” he mutters, with a spasmodic effort,
covering his face with his hands.

“He’ll go mad; you can only save him with a hair of the same dog,” one
of the prisoner’s measuredly suggests, folding his arms, and looking
mechanically upon the wretched man.

A second agrees with the first; a third says he is past cure, though a
gallon of whiskey were wasted upon him.

Mr. Mingle, the vote-cribber—regarded good authority in such
matters—interposes. He has not the shadow of a doubt but that a speedy
cure can be effected, by his friends drinking the whiskey, (he will
join them, without an objection,) and just letting Tom smell the glass.

A fifth says, without prejudice to the State of South Carolina, if he
knew Tom’s mother, he would honestly recommend her to send him special
minister to Maine. There, drinking is rather an aristocratic
indulgence, enjoyed only on the sly.

Suddenly the poor inebriate gives vent to his frenzy. The color of his
face changes from pale livid to sickly blue; his hands seem more
shrunken and wiry; his body convulses and writhes upon the floor; he is
become more the picture of a wild beast, goaded and aggravated in his
confinement. A narcotic, administered by the hand of the jailer,
produces quiet, and with the assistance of two prisoners is he raised
to his feet, and supported into the corridor, to receive the benefit of
fresh air. Here he remains some twenty minutes, stretched upon two
benches, and eyed sharply by the vote-cribber, who paces in a circle
round him, regarding him with a half suspicious leer, and twice or
thrice pausing to fan his face with the drab felt hat he carries under
his arm.

“A curious mother that sends you here for reform,” muses the
vote-cribber; “but he must be a perfect fleshhook on the feelings of
the family.”

Send him up into Rogue’s Hall,” exclaims a deep, sonorous voice, that
echoes along the aisle. The vote-cribber, having paused over Tom, as if
to contemplate his degradation, turns inquiringly, to see from whence
comes the voice. “It is me!” again the voice resounds. Two glaring
eyes, staring anxiously through the small iron grating of a door
leading to a close cell on the left of the corridor, betrays the
speaker. “It’s Tom Swiggs. I know him—he’s got the hydrophobia; its
common with him! Take him in tow, old Spunyarn, give him a good berth,
and let him mellow at thirty cents a day,” continues the voice.

The last sentence the speaker addressed to a man of comely figure and
frank countenance, who has just made his appearance, dressed in the
garb of a sailor. This man stoops over Tom, seems to recognize in him
an old acquaintance, for his face warms with kindliness, and he
straightway commences wiping the sun-scorched face of the inebriate
with his handkerchief, and with his hand smooths and parts, with an air
of tenderness, his hair; and when he has done this, he spreads the
handkerchief over the wretched man’s face, touches the querulous
vote-cribber on the arm, and with a significant wink beckons him away,
saying, “Come away, now, he has luffed into the wind. A sleep will do
him good.”




CHAPTER II.
MADAME FLAMINGO—HER DISTINGUISHED PATRONS, AND HER VERY RESPECTABLE
HOUSE.


Regard us forbearingly, generous and urbane reader; follow us undaunted
whither we go, nor charge us with tracing crime in a bad cause. We will
leave the old prison, the dejected inebriate, the more curious group
that surround him, and the tale of the destroyer it develops, and
escort you in our walk to the mansion of Madame Flamingo, who is well
known in Charleston, and commonly called the Mother of Sin. It is a
massive brick pile, situate in one of the public thoroughfares, four
stories high, with bold Doric windows, set off with brown fluted
freestone, and revealing faded red curtains, overlain with mysterious
lace, and from between the folds of which, at certain hours of the day,
languid and more mysterious eyes may be seen peering cautiously. Madame
Flamingo says (the city fathers all know it) she has a scrupulous
regard to taste, and develops it in the construction of her front door,
which is of black walnut, fluted and carved in curious designs. In
style it resembles somewhat the doors of those fashionable churches
that imitate so closely the Italian, make good, paying property of
fascinating pews, and adopt the more luxurious way of getting to heaven
(prayer-book of gold in hand) reclining on velvet and satin damask.

The mansion of Madame Flamingo differs only in sumptuousness of
furniture from twenty others of similar character, dotted here and
there about the little city. Add to these the innumerable smaller
haunts of vice that line the more obscure streets-that, rampart-like,
file along the hundred and one “back lanes” that surround the scattered
town, and, reader, you may form some estimation of the ratio of vice
and wretchedness in this population of thirty thousand, of which the
enslaved form one-third.

Having escorted you to the door, generous reader, we will forget the
common-place jargon of the world, and affect a little ceremony, for
Madame Flamingo is delicately exact in matters of etiquette. Touch
gently the bell; you will find it there, a small bronze knob, in the
fluting of the frame, and scarce perceptible to the uninitiated eye. If
rudely you touch it, no notice will be taken; the broad, high front of
her house will remain, like an ill-natured panorama of brick and
freestone, closed till daylight. She admits nothing but gentlemen; and
gentlemen know how to ring a bell. Well, you have touched it like one
of delicate nerves, and like a bell with manners polished by Madame
Flamingo herself, it answers as faintly as does the distant tinkle of
an Arab’s bell in the desert.

There! It was recognized as the ring of a genteel gentleman, and Madame
Flamingo’s heavy foot is heard advancing up the hall. Be a diplomatist
now. Show a white glove, and a delicate hand, and a winning smile, and
you have secured your passport to the satin and brocade of her mansion.
A spring is heard to tick, a whisper of caution to some one within
follows, and a block broad enough to admit your hat swings open,
disclosing the voluptuous splendor of a great hall, the blaze of which
flashes upon your senses, and fills you instinctively with curious
emotions. Simultaneously a broad, cheerful face, somewhat matronly in
its aspect, and enlivened with an urbane smile, darkens the space.
After a few moments’ pause we see two sharp gray eyes peering curiously
at us, and a soft but quick accenting voice inquires who we are. Ah!
yes, the white glove has told who we are, for the massive doors swing
open, and we find ourselves in a long, stately hall, resplendent of
Persian carpets, lounges in tapestry, walls and ceiling frescoed in
uncouth and bright-colored designs, and curiously wrought chandeliers,
shedding over all a bewitching light. The splendor is more gaudy than
regal; it strikes our fancy, but leaves our admiration unmoved. The
door is suddenly closed, and the short, portly figure of Madame (she
bows, saying her house is most select) stands before us, somewhat
nervous, as if she were yet undecided about our position in society.
She has seen some sixty summers, made her nefarious reputation in New
York; there she keeps a joint establishment, which, she adds, has been
kindly patronized by the members of several pumpkin-headed
corporations. Indeed, her princely tabernacle there was owned by one of
these individuals, but in deference to his reputation she had the lease
of a third party. Of corporations in general has she the very highest
opinion.

Madame Flamingo’s round, dapper figure, is set off with a glossy, black
satin, made high at the neck, about which a plain white collar is
arranged, corresponding nicely with the dash of snowy lace down the
stomacher, and an embroidered buff apron, under which she every few
minutes thrusts her fat, jewelled fingers. Her face is pallid, her chin
fat and dimpled, her artificial hair light brown, and lain smoothly
over a low forehead, which is curiously contrasted with a
jauntily-setting cap, the long strings of which flutter down her
shoulders.

“If you please, gentlemen,” she says, “my house is highly
respectable—highly respectable (don’t make strange of me tending my own
door!) I assure you gentlemen.” And Madame Flamingo’s eyes quicken, and
she steps round us, now contemplating us suspiciously, then frisking
her hands beneath her embroidered apron, which she successively
flaunts.

We have assured her of our standing in society. To which, with an air
of resumed confidence, and a quickened step, she says she has (that is,
she thinks she has) seen us before, and is glad to see us again. She is
getting well down in the role of years, has a treacherous memory—the
result of arduous business, and a life of trouble—the poison of a war
upon society—the excitement of seeking revenge of the world. She cannot
at all times trust her memory, for it has given out in the watchfulness
necessary to the respectability of her house, which she regards as the
Gibraltar from which she turns upon society her unerring guns. “Lord,
gentlemen,” she says in quick accents, “the reputation of this house—I
watch it as our senator to Congress does his—is my bank stock; and on
the respectability and behavior of my customers, who are of the first
families, depends my dividends. Madame Flamingo wouldn’t—gentlemen, I
am no doubt known to you by reputation?—soil the reputation of her
house for uncounted gold.” This she whispers, tripping nervously over
the soft carpet up the hall, until she reaches mid-way, where on the
right and left are two massive arched doors of black walnut, with
stained glass for fan-lights. Our guardian (she has assumed the office)
makes a significant motion with her left hand, which she moves
backward, places her right upon the porcelain knob, turns to the right,
and puts her ear inquiringly to the door. “It’s a sort of commonwealth;
yes, sir, a commonwealth—but then they are all gentlemen—some very
distinguished,” she continues, shaking her head as if to caution us.
Voices in loud conversation are heard in the room to the right, while
from out the left float the mellow notes of a waltz, accompanied by the
light tripping of feet.

With an urbane bow, and a familiar smile, Madame opens the door,
watches with an air of exultation the effect her sumptuously-furnished
parlors, and her more sumptuously-dressed worshippers, have on our
feelings. The great glare of Gothic windows; the massive curtains of
orange-colored satin that, veiled with lace, pend in undulating folds
over them; the cloudlike canopy that overhangs a dias at the further
end of the parlor; the gorgeously-carved piano, with keys of pearl,
that stands in dumb show beneath the drapery; the curiously-carved
eagles, in gilt, that perch over each window, and hold daintily in
their beaks the amber-colored drapery; the chastely-designed tapestry
of sumptuously-carved lounges, and reclines, and ottomans, and
patrician chairs, and lute tabs, arranged with exact taste here and
there about the great parlor; the massive centre and side-tables,
richly inlaid with pearl and Mosaic; the antique vases interspersed
along the sides, between the windows, and contrasting curiously with
the undulating curtains, looped alternately with goddesses of liberty,
in gilt; the jetting lights from a great chandelier, blending with
prismatic reflections; and the gaudy gossamers in which weary and
blanched-faced females flaunt, more undressed than dressed—all mingle
in one blaze of barbaric splendor.

It is here your child of ignorance and neglect is fascinated and made
to drink the first cup of death; it is here your faltering sister
falls; it is here your betrayed daughter seeks revenge; it is here your
forlorn, outcast sufferer first feels the world her enemy, has no
sympathizing sister to stretch out the hand of encouragement, and sinks
hopeless in the agony of her meditations. It is here, alas! too often
necessity forces its hapless victims, and from whence a relentless
world—without hope of regaining the lost jewel—hurls them down a short
life, into a premature grave. Your church is near by, but it never
steps in here to make an inquiry; and if it chance to cast a suspicious
look in now and then, it is only as it passes along to inquire the
state of the slave market, of so much more importance is the price of
men. Your common school (a thing unknown, and held extremely dangerous
in Carolina!) may be your much talked of guiding star to virtue; your
early education is your bulwark against which the wave of vice is
powerless; but unless you make it something more than a magnificent
theory—unless you seek practical means, and go down into the haunts of
vice, there to drag up the neglected child, to whom the word early
education is a mystery, you leave untouched the festering volcano that
vomits its deadly embers upon the community.

Your homilies preached to pew-holders of fashion, who live sumptuously,
ride sumptuously to church of a Sunday, and meekly enjoy a sumptuous
sermon for appearance sake, will, so long as you pass unheeded the
haunts of vice, fall as chaff before the wind. You must make “early
education” more than the mere motto of future happiness; you must go
undaunted into the avenues of want and misery, seek out the fallen
child, forbear with her, and kindly teach her how much good there is in
its principles, its truths.

Pardon, generous reader, this digression, and keep our arm while we see
of what metal are the votaries at the shrine of Madame Flamingo. “I
am—that is, they say I am—something of an aristocrat, you see,
gentlemen,” says the old woman, flaunting her embroidered apron, and
fussily doddling round the great centre-table, every few minutes
changing backward and forward two massive decanters and four cut-glass
goblets. We bow approvingly. Then with an air of exultation she turns
on her centre, giving a scrutinizing look at the rich decorations of
her palace, and again at us, as if anxious to draw from us one word of
approval. “Gentlemen are no way sensitive here,” pursues Madame
Flamingo, moving again the great decanters, “it’s a commonwealth of
gentlemen, you see. In New York—I dash out there, you know—my house is
a perfect palace. I keep a footman and coachman there, have the most
exact liveries, and keep up an establishment equal to my Fifth Avenue
neighbors, whose trade of rope and fish is now lost in their terrible
love of plush. I am a woman of taste, you see; but, my honor for it,
gentlemen, I know of no people so given to plush and great buttons as
our Fifth Avenue parvenues.”

It is a high old house this of Madame Flamingo. We speak approvingly of
all we see, her pride is stimulated, she quickens her conversation. “I
think you said two bottles, gentlemen? Our sparkling Moselle is
pronounced a gem by connoisseurs.” And again flaunting her embroidered
apron, she trips hurriedly out of the room. While she is gone we turn
to view its human furniture. Yonder, in a cozy alcove, stands a
marble-topped pier-table, at which are seated two gentlemen of great
respectability in the community, playing whist with fair but frail
partners. Near them, on a soft lounge, is seated a man of portly person
and venerable appearance (his hair is snowy white, and he has a frank,
open countenance), holding converse with, and evidently enamoured of a
modest and beautiful girl, of some sixteen summers, who has just taken
her seat at the opposite end. Madame Flamingo addresses this man as
“Judge.” His daylight duty is known to be that of presiding over a
criminal court. The girl with whom he nervously holds conversation, and
whose bright, Italian eyes, undulating black hair, Grecian face and
fair features, swelling bust and beautifully-chiseled shoulders, round
polished arms and tapering hands, erect figure, so exactly dressed in
black brocade, and so reserve in her demeanor, is the Anna Bonard of
this history. “Judge!” she says in reply to a question he has advanced,
and turning disdainfully upon him her great black eyes, walks
gracefully out of the room.

Sitting on a sofa opposite is a slender youth, somewhat flashily
dressed. His complexion is sandy, there is something restless in his
manner; and in his features, which are sharp and watchful, is that
which indicates a mind weak and vacillating. He sits alone, seemingly
thoughtful, and regarding with a jealous eye the insidious manner in
which the venerable judge addresses the beautiful Anna, in whom you
must know, reader, he has a deep and passionate interest. As Anna
passes out of the room he, like one in despair, rests his head in his
pale, bony, and freckled hand, and mutters to himself: “I will have
revenge. His gray hairs shall not save him—my name is George
Mullholland!”

Here and there, on sofas arranged between the great windows, sit faded
denizens, reclining languidly in dresses of various bright colors, set
off with gaudy trinkets, and exhibiting that passion for cheap jewelry
so much in vogue with the vulgar of our self-plumed aristocracy—such as
live at fashionable hotels, and, like Mrs. Snivel, who has a palace on
the Fifth Avenue, make a show-case for cheap diamonds of themselves at
breakfast table. Beside these denizens are men of every shade and grade
of society. With one sits the distinguished lawyer; with a second
converses the grave-demeanored merchant, who seeks, away from the cares
of his domestic hearth, to satisfy his curiosity here; with a third,
the celebrated physician sips his wine; with a fourth, the fatherly
planter exchanges his saliant jokes; with a fifth, Doctor Handy the
politician—who, to please his fashionable wife, a northern lady of
great beauty, has just moved from the country into the city, keeps up
an unmeaning conversation. In the lefthand corner, seated on an
ottoman, and regarding the others as if a barrier were placed between
them, are two men designated gamblers. Your Southern gentleman is, with
few exceptions, a votary of the exciting vice; but he who makes it his
profession severs the thread that bound him to society. And there sits
not far from these members of the sporting fraternity, the tall,
slender figure of a man, habited in the garb of a quaker. He regards
everything about him with the eye of a philosopher, has a flowing white
beard, a mild, playful blue eye, a short but well-lined nose, a pale
oval face, an evenly-cut mouth, and an amiable expression of
countenance. He intently watches every movement of the denizens, and
should one accost him, he will answer in soft, friendly accents. He
seems known to Madame Flamingo, whom he regards with a mysterious
demeanor, and addresses as does a father his child. The old hostess
gets no profit of his visits, for “he is only a moralist,” she says,
and his name is Solon —; and better people love him more as more they
know him.

Madame Flamingo has returned, followed by a colored gentleman in bright
livery, bearing on a silver tray two seductive bottles of the sparkling
nectar, and sundry rich-cut goblets. “There! there!” says the old
hostess, pointing to the centre-table, upon which the colored man
deposits them, and commences arranging some dozen glasses, as she
prepares to extract the corks. Now she fills the glasses with the
effervescing beverage, which the waiter again places on the tray, and
politely serves to the denizens, in whose glassy eyes, sallow faces,
coarse, unbared arms and shoulders, is written the tale of their
misery. The judge drinks with the courtesan, touches glasses with the
gambler, bows in compliment to the landlady, who reiterates that she
keeps the most respectable house and the choicest wine. The moralist
shakes his head, and declines.

And while a dozen voices are pronouncing her beverage excellent, she
turns suddenly and nervously to her massive, old-fashioned side-board,
of carved walnut, and from the numerous cut glass that range
grotesquely along its top, draws forth an aldermanic decanter, much
broken. Holding it up to the view of her votaries, and looking upon it
with feelings of regret, “that,” she says, “is what I got, not many
nights since, for kindly admitting one—I don’t know when I did such a
thing before, mind ye!—of the common sort of people. I never have any
other luck when I take pity on one who has got down hill. I have often
thought that the more kind I am the more ungrateful they upon whom I
lavish my favors get. You must treat the world just as it treats
you—you must.”

To your simple question, reader, more simply advanced, she replies
coquettishly: “Now, on my word of honor, Tom Swiggs did that. And the
poor fellow—I call him poor fellow, because, thinking of what he used
to be, I can’t help it—has not a cent to pay for his pranks with. Bless
you, (here Madame Flamingo waxes warm,) why I knew Tom Swiggs years
ago, when he wasn’t what he is now! He was as dashing a young buck then
as you’d meet in the city; used to come here a perfect gentleman; and I
liked him, and he liked me, and he got to liking the house, so you
couldn’t, if you had wanted to, have kept him away. And he always had
no end of money, which he used to spend so freely. Poor fellow! (she
sighs and shakes her head,) I confess I used to almost love Tom then.
Then he got to courting a lady—she (Madame corrects herself) wasn’t a
lady though, she was only the daughter of a mechanic of small
means—mechanic families have no standing in society, you see—and this
cut deep into his mother’s pride. And she, you see, was not quite sure
where she stood in society, you see, and wouldn’t for the world have
her pride lessened; so she discarded poor Tom. And the girl has been
got out of the way, and Tom has become penniless, and such a wreck of
dissipation that no respectable house will admit him. It’s a stiff old
family, that Swiggs family! His mother keeps him threading in and out
of jail, just to be rid of him. She is a curious mother; but when I
think how he looks and acts, how can I wonder she keeps him in jail? I
had to put him there twice—I had! (Madame Flamingo becomes emphatic.)
But remembering what a friend of the house he used to be, I took pity
on him, let him out, and lent him two dollars. And there’s honor—I’ve
great faith in honor—in Tom, who, I honestly believe, providing the
devil do not get him in one of his fits, will pay all damages,
notwithstanding I placed the reputation of my house in jeopardy with
him a few nights since, was forced to call three policemen to eject
him, and resolved that he should not again darken my door.”




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 child-like
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 child-like 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 Michels, 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 straightbacked 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!” 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 carryin’ 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 reckonin’, 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 marline-spikes. 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 stage 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
sideboard 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
gossipmonger 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 fˆted 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 assafotida, 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 polked 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 gaslight 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 gaslight 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, over-lain
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, cloudlike, 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 further 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 whose 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 gaslight 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
child-like 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 may be. 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 grave-yard; 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
C‘sar 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 quickly 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 may be 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 net-work 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 hedgehogs 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 re- ceived 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 resp

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