The sweetest fragrance grows;
From many a deep and hidden spring,
The coolest water flows.
She first inquires, "have they all been good?" "Yes, all." Then she unwraps her parcel. How they look and wonder, "what is it?"
What is it? Simply this.
She has been out and spent her sixpence to do unto others just as she had been done unto. Did ever cakes taste sweeter? Did ever benevolence better enjoy herself than Maggie did, while thus distributing her rewards? What a lesson of self-sacrifice! The first sixpence—the whole treasure of this world's goods, spent to promote the happiness of others. This was a hint. It were a dull intellect that could not improve it. The children were further fed, and bid to come again to-morrow. "And this," said he, "was the beginning of our ragged beggar children school, that has proved such a blessing to this neighborhood.
"Maggie," said I, taking her by the hand and looking her in the eye. "Maggie, you have helped me a great deal to-day, will you come again to-morrow?"
The string was touched, and tears flowed. When had tears, except tears of anger, filled those eyes before? What had touched that string? Kind words!
"If you will let me stay, I wont go away. I can learn to sew. I can make these shirts."
"Yes, yes; and if you are here, these children will come, and we will have school every day."
And so Wild Maggie was Wild Maggie no more. She was tamed. Her life had taken on a new phase. To the questions, what would her father say? what would her mother say? she replied, "What do they care? what have they ever cared? Though they were not always so bad as they now are."
No, they were not always so bad as they now are. None of his class were always so bad as they now are. Once her father was James Reagan, a respectable man, a good carpenter, and had a good home. Now where was he. Sunk, step by step, from hotel to saloon, from saloon to bar-room, from bar-room to corner grocery, from grocery to cellar rum hole, from a good house to a filthy, underground den in Centre street. He has but one more step to take—one more underground hole to occupy.
But such as he may reform. He did. You have seen that. Will you ask, how? You shall know.
Maggie became one of the household. She was washed, and fed, and clothed; and how she worked, and learnt everything, and how she listened at the temperance meetings to what "the pledge" had done, and how she wished her mother would come and try—try to leave off drinking, and become "the good mother she was when I was a little girl." For her father she had no hope. For her mother, she determined to persevere. When she was sober she would talk, and cry, and promise, but the demon rum would overcome her, and then she would curse her daughter, and call her all the vile names that the insane devil in her could invent.
And so it went on; Maggie still determined, still trying. The right time came at last. One night, Maggie was not at the meeting. By and by, there was a little stir at the door. What is the matter? A little girl is pulling a woman, almost by force, into the room. It is Maggie and her mother. She has got her old ragged dress off, and looks quite neat in one that Maggie has made for her. But she hides her face. She is ashamed to look those in the face she would have once looked down upon. A woman is speaking—women can speak upon temperance—just such a woman as herself—is it not herself—is she awake, or does she sleep and dream? If awake, she hears her own story. The story of a woman with a drunken husband. And she traces his fall from affluence down to beggary; then her fall, down, down, down, to a cellar in Farlow's Court; there her husband dies; there upon a pile of straw and rags upon the floor, in drunken unconsciousness, she gives birth to a child—a living child by the side of its dead father.
"What a night—what a scene, but you have not seen the worst of it. The very heavens, as though angry at such awful use of the gifts of reason, and the abuse of appetite, sent their forked messengers of fire to the earth—less dangerous than the fire that man bottles up for his own damnation; and the water came down in torrents, pouring into that cave where the dead, and living, and new born were lying together, and overflowed the floor, and when I felt its chill," said she, "I awaked out of my drunken sleep, and felt around me, to see, no, I could not see, all was pitch darkness. My child cried, and then—then a whole army of rats, driven in by the rain, driven by the water from the floor, came creeping on to me. Oh! how their slimy bodies felt as they crept over my face. Then I tried to awaken my husband, but he would not wake, and in my frenzy I struck and bit him—bit a dead man—for his was the sleep of eternity. Then I summoned almost superhuman strength, and creeped up the stairs and out into the court. I looked up; the storm was gone; there was a smile in heaven—it was the smile of that murdered babe; for when I had begged a light, and went back again to that dreadful, dreadful habitation—why are human beings permitted to live in such awful holes—has nobody any care for human life—what did I see? Mothers, mothers—mothers that sleep on soft couches—hear me, hear me—hear of the bitter fruits the rum trade bears—the rats had devoured the life blood of that child. What next I know not. I know that I have never drank since—never will again—by signing this pledge I was saved—all may be saved."
"All? all? Can I—can I be restored as you have been—can I shake off this demon that has dragged me down so low that my own mother would not know me; or knowing, would spurn me? Can I be saved?"
It was Maggie's mother.
"Yes, you, you, I was a thousand times worse. Look at me now."
"Yes, mother, you. Come." And she took her by the hand and led her up to the table, put a pen in her hand—dropt upon her knees—looked up to her mother imploringly—up to heaven prayerfully—her lips quivered—the tears rolled down her cheeks—"Now, mother, now."
'Tis done. She wrote her name in a fair hand—Mary Reagan—'Tis done.
And so she did. She never fell. She came to live in the house with Maggie. "I cannot go back," she said, "to live with your father, if I would stand fast; and I cannot think, after hearing that woman's story, last night, of ever drinking again. I know that woman; I knew her when she was a girl, one of the proudest and prettiest. My husband has spent many a dollar with hers in the bar-room. Oh yes, I knew her well. I did not know her last night; but when she told me who she was—that she was Elsie Wendall—then I knew her. Oh! I could tell you such a story—but not now. No! no, I cannot live with your father again, for I never will drink any more—never—never!"
"But what, if father will take the pledge?"
"Oh! then I should be a happy woman again. But there is no hope."
"Yes, there is hope. I shall watch him; and, mother, I will save him."
It was a great promise—a great undertaking for a young girl to promise with an "I will." When did "I will" in woman's mouth ever fail?
That will was the strength of her life. It was for that she now lived and labored. Now she had hope—now 'twas lost—now revived again. Now he worked a month—sober for a whole month—then down he went if he happened to go into one of his old haunts, or meet with some of his old companions, who said, "come, Jim, let's take one drink—only one—one won't do any hurt"—but two follow the one. Then Maggie would look him up, get him sober again, and get him to work.
God bless that child! God did bless her, for she stuck to him, until he finally consented to come once, just once to the temperance meeting—but he would not sign the pledge—he never would sign away his liberties—no—he was a free man. Well only come, come and listen—come and see mother. That touched him. He loved mother—Yes he would come. The evening came. Maggie watched every shadow that darkened the door. Finally the last one seemed to have entered, but Jim Reagan was not among them. Maggie could not give it up. She slipped out into the street, it was well she did. She was just in time. A knot of men were talking together, of the tyranny of temperance men, wanting to make slaves of the people, getting them to sign away their rights—rights their fathers fought and bled for.
Yes, and so had they—at the nose.
They had just carried the point, and started to follow Cale Jones over to his grocery, who was going to stand treat all round. One lingered a moment—looked back—as though he had promised to go that way—but appetite was too strong for conscience, and he turned towards the rum-hole. Just then a gentle hand is laid upon his arm, and a sweet voice says:
"Father, come with me, come and see mother—don't go with those men."
Woman conquered.
When Cale Jones counted noses, to see which he should charge with the treat he had promised "to stand," he found Jim Reagan was not in the crowd.
"Why, damn the fellow, he has given us the slip after all our trouble. I thought we had made a sure thing of it. I tell you what it is, boys, we must manage somehow to stop this business, or trade is ruined. If people are not to be allowed to drink anything but water, there'll be many an honest man out of business. Times is hard enough now, what'll they be then?"
Just then Tom Nolan, the mason—it used to be Drunken Tom Nolan—was telling what they would be, at the temperance meeting.
It was a propitious time for Maggie. She led her father in, he hung back a little, and tried to get into a dark corner near the door. That she would not allow; some of Satan's imps might drag him away from the very threshold of salvation. She led him along, he was sober now, and looked sad, perhaps, ashamed.
"James, you here? Oh!"
It was his wife. He knew her voice, it was that of other days. He stared at her; could it be her, so neat, and clean, and well dressed, and speaking so fondly to him—to him—for she had refused to see him ever since she took the pledge. Now, she came forward, took him by the hand, ragged and dirty as he was—she knew what would clean him—led him to a seat and sat down by his side. Maggie sat on the other. For a minute the speaker could not go on. There was a choking in his throat, strong man as he was, and there were many tears in the eyes that looked upon that father, mother, and daughter, that night.
"Jim Reagan," said the speaker, "I am glad to see you here. You are an old acquaintance of mine."
Jim Reagan looked at him with astonishment. Could that well dressed laboring man, clean shaved and clean shirted, be Tom Nolan?
"I don't wonder that you look inquiringly at me, as much as to say, 'is that you?' Yes, it is me, Tom Nolan, the mason, me who used to lay around the dirty rum holes with you, begging, lying, stealing, to get a drink. Do you think that now I would pick up old cigar stumps and quids of tobacco, to fill my pipe? Do you think I would wear a hat, as I have done, that my poor beggared boy picked out of the street? Look at that. Does that look like the old battered thing I used to wear? Do these clothes look like the dirty rags I wore when you and I slept in Cale Jones's coal-box? Do I look like the drunken Tom Nolan that kept a family of starving beggars, with two other families, in one room, ten by twelve feet square; and that a garret room, without fireplace, without glass in its one window; with the roof so low that I could only stand up straight in one corner; and that mean room in the vilest locality on earth, in a house—ah! whole row of houses, tenanted by just such miserable, rum-beggared human beings—buildings owned by a human monster—houses for the poor which are enough to sicken the vilest of beasts; such as no good man would let for tenements, even when he could get tenants as degraded as I was—tenements that any Christian grand jury would indict, and any court, which desired to protect the lives of the people, would compel the owners to pull down, as the worst, with one exception, of all city nuisances.
"How did I live there? How did my wife and children ever live there, in that little miserable room, with seven others, just such wretches as ourselves? How do hundreds of such men, women, and children as we were, still live there? I was in that same room—the place my children used to call home—this evening. The entrance is in Cow Bay. If you would like to see it, saturate your handkerchief with camphor, so that you can endure the horrid stench, and enter. Grope your way through the long, dark, narrow passage—turn to your right, up the dark and dangerous stairway; be careful where you place your foot around the lower step, or in the corners of the broad stairs, for it is more than shoe-mouth deep of steaming filth. Be careful too, or you may meet some one—perhaps a man, perhaps a woman—as nature divides the sexes; as the rum seller combines them, both beasts, who in their drunken frenzy may thrust you, for the very hatred of your better clothes, or the fear that you have come to rescue them from their crazy loved dens of death, down, headlong down, those filthy stairs. Up, up, winding up, five stories high, now you are under the black smoky roof; turn to the left—take care and not upset that seething pot of butcher's offal soup, that is cooking upon a little furnace at the head of the stairs—open that door—go in, if you can get in. Look; here is a negro and his wife sitting upon the floor—where else could they sit, for there is no chair—eating their supper off of the bottom of a pail. A broken brown earthen jug holds water—perhaps not all water. Another negro and his wife occupy another corner; a third sits in the window monopolising all the air astir. In another corner, what do we see?
"A negro man, and a stout, hearty, rather good looking, young white woman."
"Not sleeping together?"
"No, not exactly that—there is no bed in the room—no chair—no table—no nothing—but rags, and dirt, and vermin, and degraded, rum degraded, human beings—men and women with just such souls as animate the highest and proudest in the land."
"Who is this man?"
"Dat am Ring-nosed Bill."
"Is that his wife?"
"Well, I don't know that. He calls her his woman."
"And she lives with him as his wife—you all live here together in this room?"
"Well, we is got nowhere else to live. Poor folks can't lib as rich ones do—hab to pay rent—pretty hard to do that alone."
"How much rent for this room?"
"Seventy-five cents a week, ebry time in advance."
"Who is this man?"
"They calls me Snaky Jo. 'Spose may be my name is Jo Snaky. Don't know rightly."
"What do you do for a living?"
"Well, mighty hard to tell dat, dat am fact, massa. Picks up a job now and then. Mighty hard times though—give poor man a lift, massa."
"Is that man and woman drunk."
"Well, 'spose am, little tossicated."
"A little intoxicated! They are dead drunk, lying perfectly unconscious, in each other's emesis, upon the bare floor. The atmosphere of this room is enough to breed contagion, and sicken the whole neighborhood, and would, but that the whole neighborhood is equally bad. Let us hasten down to the open air of the court—it is but little better—all pollution—all that breathe it, polluted. Yet, in that gate of death I once lived. Look at me, James, you knew me then. Look at me now, you don't know me. You knew me a beast—you may know me a man—you may know yourself one. Sign this paper—there is a power of magic in it—and you shall go home with me, and see where I live now, and I will clothe you and help to sustain you in your sober life, just as Thomas Elting did me, and with heaven's blessing, we will make a man of you."
"Too late! too late! not enough of the old frame left to rebuild."
"It is never too late. Look at the piles of old brick, and tiles, and boards, and joist, and rafters, and doors, and glass, of the pulled down houses. Are they wasted? I am a mason, you a carpenter; if we cannot put them back and build up the same old-fashioned edifice, we can make a good, snug, comfortable house. Come, sign the contract, and let us set right about the job."
"Father, come, father!"
He turned and spoke a few low words to his wife, to which she replied:
"Yes, I will. Keep the pledge one month and I will go and live with you, die with you."
"Then try it, father, come." And she led him forward, just as she had done her mother. You have seen, shall see, how heaven blessed her for filial piety.
"I used to write. 'Tis a long time since I did. Maggie, my hand trembles. Help me—guide the pen. I cannot see clearly."
No wonder. There was a tear in each eye. There were other tears when Maggie took him again by the hand, and again said:
"Come, father, let us pray;" and then all kneeled down together, and then Mr. Nolan took him by the arm, and said, "Come, James, let us go home."
Not yet. He had one more act to perform. He shook his wife's hand, and said, "Good bye. I shall keep it." Then he looked wishfully at Maggie, as though he wanted something, yet dare not ask it, for fear he should be repulsed. Still the yearning of nature was upon him. It was a long time since he had felt it as he now felt, but he was beginning to be a new man. Maggie was his only child, his once loved, much caressed child. Would she ever cling those arms around his neck again. She had shown herself this night one of the blessed of this earth. She had done, or induced him to do, what no other soul on earth could have done, and how his heart did yearn to clasp her in his arms. He stopped half way to the door, and looked upon her with tearful, loving, thankful eyes. It needs no wires, no magnet, no human contrivance, to convey the magnetism of the heart. She felt its power, as it sprung from the lightning flash of loving eyes, and quick as that flash, she made one bound, one word, "Father!" and her arms were around his neck, her lips to his, and here let us shift the scene.
CHAPTER IV.
THE TEMPTATION.—THE FALL.
So have been her children.
About two months after the events of the last chapter, a few of the new friends of James Reagan joined together, procured a comfortable room in Mulberry street, and put in the necessary articles of furniture, and his wife, faithful to her promise, came to live with him. There was a great contrast between this and the home where we visited him in Centre street. Nolan and Elting stuck to him, and he stuck to the pledge. Margaret watched him, visited him, went with him and her mother to church and temperance meetings, and, finally, became satisfied and happy that her father had made a complete reformation, and that he had outlived all danger of relapse; so she accepted a good offer to go into the country, and live in a farmer's house, where she would learn house-work. It was her fortune, but his misfortune, thus to be separated. She was his ever-watchful guardian angel. His wife was affectionately kind, and they lived together, as of old, happily. And so, as of Adam and Eve in paradise, they might have lived, if there had been no serpents in New York. They beset him—waylaid him—tempted him—but no art could induce him to enter their sulphurous dens. Cale Jones swore that he would get him back; that he would have him among his old cronies again, or die in the attempt.
"Them ere cold water chaps aren't a going to crow over me that ere way, no how. I tell you what it is, boys, you must contrive some way to get Jim in here some night; he has got money now, and if he won't drink himself, he shall stand treat any how. We've treated him many a time."
"Dat am de fac," says Ring-nosed Bill.
"Shut your clapper, you drunken nigger, you; who axt you to put in your oar. If you want to do anything, just get Jim Reagan, by hook or crook, in here once more."
"And you will give him what you did Pedlar Jake."
"Shut pan, or I'll chuck your ivory into your bread-basket. What's in your wool, Snakey?"
"Dis nigger knows how to fix him. Make him come his self."
"Let her rip, Snakey; how'll you do it?"
"Jis go to work at right end foremost. 'Spose you the debble stick him forked tongue right out all at once to frighten Fader Adam? No, sir-ee; he creep round mighty sly, and wiggle him tail at Mudder Eve, and den she come it over de old man. Dat am the way. Aren't you got no gumption?"
"I understand. Who shall the Eve be, Snakey?"
"Smoky Sal. She is a pet of his. He got her in."
"I know it. She is in that old missionary's claws. How are you going to get her out?"
"Dat easy 'nuff, so you work him right. Gib us a drink, Cale. I isn't going to grab for you for nothing."
"I'll give you a gallon if you bring him in. How'll you do it?'
"Do you think this nigger am a fool, sure? 'Spose I gwine to tell you, and lose the gallon. Take notice, Ring-nose, it's a fair trade. So jis you git ready to-morrow night for business, case he'll be down then."
The next night the trap was set. Snakey went to One-eyed Angeline, and promised her a share in the gallon, if she would contrive a plan to get Smoky Sal out of the House of Industry, and get her over to Cale Jones's, and get her drunk.
These two had long been sisters in sin. One had reformed, or was trying to reform, for Reagan had got her into the House, and seemed very anxious for her, having, as he said, been the cause of her downfall. The other hated her for her reformation, and would drag her back, down, down, to the wretched life she had escaped from.
So she sent word to Sally that she was sick and almost dying, and begged her to come and see her. How could she refuse? So she went, and found her with her head tied up, and in dreadful pain. Directly in came Snakey Jo, with the first installment of the gallon. It was to bathe her head. Can an old inebriate put liquor upon the outside of the head without putting it in? Sally could not. She smelt—she tasted—she drank—was drunk—and then Angeline took her down to Cale Jones's grocery, and into his back room, and then that black imp of a worse than slave's master, watched for Reagan as he started for home, and with an air of honesty that might deceive the wariest old fox into a trap, he told him how "Angeline had coaxed Sally into the grocery, and he had been watching an hour"—that was the only truth he spoke—he watched for another victim—"and she hadn't come out yet, and he was afraid she was in trouble; and now, Mister Reagan, I is so glad I is fell in wid you, accidental like, case I didn't know as you was in the Points, case you can get her out, and get her back home."
With a natural impulse to do good, he determined, imprudently, to be sure, to do what he had not done since he signed the pledge—to enter a rum-hole. There he found the two women as the negro had told him. Sally was completely overcome, and lying in one corner of "the back room." Back it was, quite out of sight or hearing of the street, where many a victim had been robbed at a game of cards, or by more direct means. It was in this room that Pedlar Jake got his quietus.
"I had been in the room often before," said Reagan. "I knew the way, and I paid no heed to the hypocritically angry words I was greeted with as I entered, and told to clear out and mind my own business. I pushed my way through the crowd of loafers, and entered the door of death. That old witch, Angeline, took care to get out of my way as I went in. I sat down upon the bed and tried to rouse up the victim of this infernal plot, little thinking that I was the greatest one of the two. The room was very close and foul, and as I had been unused, lately, to breathe such air, it made me sick. 'Tom,' said I—let me stop and moralize a little upon this name. I would never call a child, Tom. There is something fatal in the word. I have known more drunken Toms than of all other names. It is a low-bred name. Bill, Jim, Joe, Sam, Ike, are all bad, but none equal to Tom." "Two of my drunkenest companions," said Reagan, "afterwards, my best friends, were Toms—now Thomas Elting and Thomas Nolan." Parents, don't nickname your children, it is a step down that may carry them to the bottom of the ladder.
Give your children good names; names they will not be ashamed of in after life, and never cut them short. Never call, William, Bill; or, Catherine, Kate; or, Mary, that most beautiful of all names, a name I love, Moll; it will, perhaps, be the direct cause of their ruin as they grow up. Who would think of speaking a foul word to Miss Mary Dudley? Who would speak with respect to Moll Dud? Parents, think of it.
Now, here was another Tom. A bright, active boy—Tom Top, whose proper name was, Thomas Topham. What if he had been called Charles? why, his nickname would have been an elongation to Charley, a name that everybody loves. At any rate, he would not have been, drunken Tom—a poor, neglected orphan boy, who, for want of some one to guide and keep him in the path of virtue, had strayed into the very worst of all paths of vice. From a home, where he received a fair education, and had a good mother, but a father who learned him to drink, and who thought it cunning to call him, Tom Top, he was come down to be a mere hanger-on around Cale Jones's grocery.
"God never works without an object," is an axiom of those who look every day to him for counsel. We shall see in time how the villain was defeated in his object of bringing Reagan into this place, and making use of Tom for an instrument of his ruin.
"'Tom,' said I, 'bring me a glass of water.' He did so, I tasted it and set it down a moment for the ice to melt. When I took it up again, I swallowed the whole tumbler full at a gulph. In a moment my throat, my stomach, my brain were on fire. I had drank half-a-pint of white whiskey. Those wicked wretches had hired Tom to substitute one glass for the other. What transpired for three days after, I know not."
The next morning, before sunrise, his wife came down to the Points in an agony of fear. "Was Reagan there?" was her hopeful inquiry. Hope sunk and almost carried her with it when told that he left there before ten to go home. "Then he is lost, lost, lost!"
All that day he was searched for up and down, high and low, but nobody had seen him. How the villains lied, for they were all the time gloating over their victory—double victory—two stray sheep won back—back to the wolf's den. All that day the pack were carousing upon the money robbed from Reagan.
"What a glorious haul, boys," says Cale Jones, "we must have Tom Elting and Nolan, next, and then hurrah, boys, we'll break up old Pease and drive him out of the Points yet."
How could human nature become so infernally depraved, as to rejoice over and glorify such deeds of darkness?
By Rum. The very parent of total depravity.
At night, after their day's work, Elting and Nolan came down and joined the search, looking into every hole that was most likely to have been used for his tomb, worse than tomb, for it was the burial-place of his soul. They did not look in Cale Jones's back room, for he "took his Bible oath that Jim Reagan had never entered his door in a three month."
Finally, after the pack had spent every cent of his money, and pawned every article of his clothing, they were ready to get rid of his company. But they were not quite satisfied with the misery they had made for his wife, and so they plotted a scheme so wicked that the most incarnate one of all the hosts of the infernal regions would blush to own the deed.
They knew that Sally had been a source of disturbance, a cause of jealousy to his wife in by-gone years, and so they laid their plan. Madalina, a little beggar girl, an Italian rag-picker's daughter, was promised a sixpence to go, as she would not be suspected, to tell Mrs. Reagan, that Tom knew where her husband was.
It was a faint hope, but drowning men catch at straws.
Tom was hunted up. He was easily found, for he had his instructions, "to bring the old woman along." Did they hope in her frenzy of despair and jealousy that she too would fall? Yes they did.
Could human ingenuity contrive anything more harrowing to the mind of a wife, searching for her absent husband, than an introduction into a room where he was in bed with another woman, folding her, in his drunken insanity, in his arms, protesting how he loved her, loved her better than he did—better than—his grog?
The monsters missed their aim. Mrs. Reagan spoke kindly to him as though in her own bed; begged him to get up and go home with her. No he would not. She might go back to her old missionary paramour. She might go to —— no matter where, he was drunk. But he could not get up, for the villains had stripped him of every stitch of clothing; they had not even left him a shirt. So she went away, sorrowing.
"Tom," said she, "come, go home with me, that is a good boy, I feel so faint and weak." Tom was a good boy; who had ever said it though? One, one he remembered, and these words came like hers and nestled down in his heart. They will live there and drive out evil ones.
Tom went home with her, giving her his arm and telling her to lean upon it. Tom was not the best of guides, he made several missteps that day, for tears dimmed his eyes, but he made one good step, it was up the ladder of reform.
"Mrs. Reagan," said he, "let me stay here to-day, I have got no home, and I don't feel as though I wanted to go back to Cale Jones's."
No. He did not want to go back there. He had heard the sound of his dead mother's voice, saying, good boy. Nobody would say, good boy, if he went back there. Conscience too was doing her work; conscience told him what he had done to a woman who now said, "good boy."
So he stayed—he was a good boy—she was sick and he waited upon her all day. At night he was going to get Mr. Elting and Nolan to go with him and bring Reagan home. That would be his reward. He has his hand upon the door to go out, but waits a moment to see who comes. He opens it to a hurried footstep, and in bounds Wild Maggie, her face radiant with health, strength, and the lovely bloom of country life.
"Where's father? Mother sick? What's the matter?"
Her mother draws the clothes over her face. She would not have her daughter see her weep.
"Tom, my boy, tell me; come, Tom, that is a good boy—the truth, nothing but the truth—I must know it."
Good boy, again, and his heart overflowed. He could stand kicks, and cuffs, and curses, without a tear, but he could not hold out against, "good boy."
"Maggie, I will not lie to you, I could not; but I can't tell you the truth."
"Why?"
"I am 'fraid you won't call me good boy again."
"Yes, I will. I don't believe you are a bad one."
"And you won't hate me?"
"No, no; she cannot hate you, for you have been good to her mother, to-day."
"Mother! Oh! I know all about it. You need not tell me. Only, where is he? I will go and bring him home."
"Did Heaven ever give a mother such another child?"
Yes, many such. Many a flower would send its blossomed sweets to many a heart, but for blighting frosts in its young years.
"What sent you home, Maggie?"
"I don't know, mother; I felt as though I was wanted. Something told me so. I dreamed so for three nights, and so I came."
She was soon told everything. Tom made a full confession; and still she did not hate him. She told him how he could help her. He should go with her; she was going to bring her father home. She gave him a little bundle of clothes to carry; and away they went. She stopped on her way down, at the police office, made her complaint, and took an officer along with her, who arrested Cale Jones and the two women; the rest of the gang were prowling for prey somewhere else. The women were sent to the Island, next day, for they had no friends. The plotter of villainy had. The Alderman of the Sixth Ward, was his friend; political friend; him he sent for; and after being an hour in custody, he was discharged; and this was the end of his punishment.
Reagan, since his wife's visit in the morning, had steadily refused to drink any more, and had become in a measure sober. It was a sad meeting with his daughter. At first, he refused to see or speak to her. He was ashamed. Nature overcame him at last, and he got up and pulled off the dirty suit his robbers had put on him, preparatory to kicking him into the street, and put on the clean ones, which Maggie and Tom had brought him; and then they took him, each by an arm, and went home. It was a sad home; it never will be a happy one again. Then she went to work and got him some supper, spending of her own little store to buy some tea, and such things as he could eat.
"Now," says she, "I have got another thing to do to-night, for I must go back again in the morning. Tom, I am going to provide you with a home. You must go to the House of Industry, reform, and make a man of yourself."
Reader, do not forget. This ministering angel, is Wild Maggie.
Most willingly he went with her, and was most kindly received by the Superintendent. There we will leave him awhile. We shall see him again perhaps.
Maggie went back to her country home. Her father remained sick for some days, and then went to work, but his spirit was broken, he grew more and more uneasy, and finally, in a fit of despondency, met with one of his old cronies, and back he went, down, down, to his former degradation. Had he gone back and renewed his pledge, after his first fall, when he was dragged down, he might have been saved; but he would not; he said, he had proved himself incapable of ever being a man again, and so he sunk in despair. Week after week his clothes, his furniture, his wife's clothes, even her daughter's gift-Bible, went for rum. Nothing was left, but starvation. Yes, there was one thing left for her—one thing that that wife had never before received from her husband.
A blow, a black-eye, and a kick. It was one drop too much in her cup of affliction, and she parted with him for ever, and came back to her old home, the House of Industry.
Tom welcomed her with a smile; he was door-keeper now.
"It is better to be door-keeper," said he, "in the house—you know the rest. I will call Mr. P. I am sure, he will give you a home, he said as much yesterday. I shall write to Maggie now, and let her know all about it."
"You are very kind, Tom, to say that."
"Well, wasn't she kind to me? Where should I have been all this time, if it had not been for her? I think, we will get the old man in again, yet."
"No, no, he is passed everything, now. He never was so bad before, never struck me a blow before. A blow from him! Oh! it is dreadful. I never can forgive that."
"Don't say that. 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.'"
"True, my boy, you have taught me a lesson. I will forgive, but I don't think he will ever get over this bout; he is very violent."
"The most violent fires are soonest burnt out."
Tom had faith, she had none, she was a sad victim of despair—a despairing wife. But time will heal the deepest wounds. She went to work, grew cheerful, and contented there to spend the remainder of her life, which she said, would not be long. Of that she seemed to have a presentiment, and made all preparation which it becomes a reasonable mortal to make for such a prospective journey. She seemed to have but one wish.
"Oh! if I could see my husband as he was a few months ago, I should be willing to die then. But I cannot bear to die now with the thought upon my mind, that he would never shed a tear at my grave."
His time was coming. Tom was a philosopher. "Didn't I tell you," says he, "that the fire would soon burn out. He was here last night, walking up and down the pavement for hours, looking down into the kitchen when you were at work."
"Perhaps he wanted to strike me again."
"No, he was as sober as a judge."
"Oh, dear! then may be he was hungry, poor man."
"So I thought, and went and bought him a loaf of bread. When I gave it to him, he burst into tears, and walked away to a cart and sat down to eat it. He was hungry, and for fear he would be dry, and go to that cursed hole—"
"Don't swear, Tom."
"I can't help it; it is one, and why not call it so? I did not want him to go there, and so I went and got him a cup of water, and carried to him, and then I thought if everybody knew what a blessed thing it is to give these poor old drunkards bread and water instead of rum, how much happiness they might make in the world. And then I talked to him about taking the pledge again, but he said, 'no, Tom, I took it once, I don't want to break it again.' 'No,' said I, 'you did not break it, it was me that did it, I was the guilty one.' And then I told him all about it. He never knew before. The rascals there told him, that he and Sally came there together and called for whiskey, and then got drunk and went to bed together, and he believed it; his mind was so confused that he forgot all about the past, and he never knew till now that they had lied to him so shockingly. 'You don't know,' says he, 'Tom, what a load you have lifted off of my conscience.' Then I asked him where he was going to sleep that night?
"'Where? where should I? In the cart or under it. Anywhere I can find a hole. Me that have had a house of my own, and built a score of houses for others to sleep in, have not slept in one these two months. Perhaps never shall again.'
"'Yes you will,' says I; 'you will sleep in that one to-night.'
"'What! under the same roof with my wife once more; I don't know as I could stand it; it is more happiness than I deserve.'
"'No, it is not; and if you will go away in the morning, and stay away all day, and come back at night as sober as you are now, I will ask the Superintendent to take you in for good.'
"'I will, I will! I will go away and sweep the streets to-morrow; they will give me another loaf of bread, and that is more than I have had for a whole week.'
"So you see, he will come again to-night, and then it is temperance meeting, and we will get him in. Depend upon it, if he ever takes the pledge again he will never break it."
True to his word, Reagan came the next night sober.
"See," said he, "Tom, I have got a quarter of a dollar, and have not spent it for liquor. If some of the harpies knew I had it, how they would be after me."
He hesitated long about going into the meeting. He was afraid his wife would be there, and he could not bear to meet her. She was equally afraid to meet him. Finally, one of the assistants went out and talked with him.
"Do you think," he replied, "that I could ever be a man again? I am afraid there is not enough of me left to make one. Manhood is all gone. I feel as though I had made a beast of myself so long, that I must always be a beast. But if you think there is enough left of the old wreck—"
"Enough? Yes; come along."
This was a new voice, just come up on the other side. He looked around; it was Nolan.
"Nolan, my old friend—you were a friend to me; and I will try if Mr. Pease will agree to shut me up and keep me out of the way of these alligators. Look at them. Don't they lie about just like alligators in the mud and swamps, ready to snap up every poor dog that comes within reach of their tails or jaws?"
Well, he took the pledge, and in due time we will see how he kept it.
While I give my readers a little respite from the contemplation of such characters as have been introduced in the preceding chapters, I propose to introduce a little episode in the life of two of those which they have seen engaged in the noble work of reclaiming and sustaining a poor inebriate in his efforts to become a sober man. That they had reason to believe in the possibility of such reclamation, the reader will understand after reading the historical facts of the next chapter.
CHAPTER V.
THE TWO PENNY MARRIAGE.