Cast Adrift

“Well, Andy, where did you come from?” asked the man.

“Don’t know,” was answered.

“Don’t know!”

Andy shook his head.

“Where do you live?”

“Don’t live nowhere,” returned the child; “and I’m hungry.”

“Hungry?” The man let the hand he was still holding drop, and getting up quickly, took some bread from a closet and set it on the old table.

Andy did not wait for an invitation, but seized upon the bread and commenced eating almost ravenously. As he did so the man fumbled in his pockets. There were a few pennies there. He felt them over, counting them with his fingers, and evidently in some debate with himself. At last, as he closed the debate, he said, with a kind of compelled utterance,

“I say, young one, wouldn’t you like some milk with your bread?”

“Milk! oh my I oh goody! yes,” answered the child, a gleam of pleasure coming into his face.

“Then you shall have some;” and catching up a broken mug, the man went out. In a minute or two he returned with a pint of milk, into which he broke a piece of bread, and then sat watching Andy as he filled himself with the most delicious food he had tasted for weeks, his marred face beaming with a higher satisfaction than he had known for a long time.

“Is it good?” asked the man.

“I bet you!” was the cheery answer.

“Well, you’re a little brick,” laughed the man as he stroked Andy’s head. “And you don’t live anywhere?”

“No.”

“Is your mother dead?”

“Yes.”

“And your father?”

“Hain’t got no father.”

“Would you like to live here?”

Andy looked toward the empty bowl from which he had made such a satisfying meal, and said,

“Yes.”

“It will hold us both. You’re not very big;” and as he said this the man drew his arm about the boy in a fond sort of way.

“I guess you’re tired,” he added, for Andy, now that an arm was drawn around him, leaned against it heavily.

“Yes, I’m tired,” said the child.

“And sleepy too, poor little fellow! It isn’t much of a bed I can give you, but it’s better than a door-step or a rubbish corner.”

Then he doubled the only blanket he had, and made as soft a bed as possible. On this he laid Andy, who was fast asleep almost as soon as down.

“Poor little chap!” said the man, in a tender, half-broken voice, as he stood over the sleeping child, candle in hand. “Poor little chap!”

The sight troubled him. He turned with a quick, disturbed movement and put the candle down. The light streaming upward into his face showed the countenance of a man so degraded by intemperance that everything attractive had died out of it. His clothes were scanty, worn almost to tatters, and soiled with the slime and dirt of many an ash-heap or gutter where he had slept off his almost daily fits of drunkenness. There was an air of irresolution about him, and a strong play of feeling in his marred, repulsive face, as he stood by the table on which he had set the candle. One hand was in his pocket, fumbling over the few pennies yet remaining there.

As if drawn by an attraction he could not resist, his eyes kept turning to the spot where Andy lay sleeping. Once, as they came back, they rested on the mug from which the child had taken his supper of bread and milk.

“Poor little fellow!” came from his lips, in a tone of pity.

Then he sat down by the table and leaned his head on his hand. His face was toward the corner of the room where the child lay. He still fumbled the small coins in his pocket, but after a while his fingers ceased to play with them, then his hand was slowly withdrawn from the pocket, a deep sigh accompanying the act.

After the lapse of several minutes he took up the candle, and going over to the bed, crouched down and let the light fall on Andy’s face. The large forehead, soiled as it was, looked white to the man’s eyes, and the brown matted hair, as he drew it through his fingers, was soft and beautiful. Memory had taken him back for years, and he was looking at the fair forehead and touching the soft brown hair of another baby. His eyes grew dim. He set the candle upon the floor, and putting his hands over his face, sobbed two or three times.

When this paroxysm of feeling went off, he got up with a steadier air, and set the light back upon the table. The conflict going on in his mind was not quite over, but another look at Andy settled the question. Stooping with a hurried movement, he blew out the candle, then groped his way over to the bed, and lying down, took the child in his arms and drew him close to his breast. So the morning found them both asleep.

CHAPTER XIX

MR. DINNEFORD had become deeply interested in the work that was going on in Briar street, and made frequent visits to the mission house. Sometimes he took heart in the work, but oftener he suffered great discouragement of feeling. In one of his many conversations with Mr. Paulding he said,

“Looking as I do from the standpoint gained since I came here, I am inclined to say there is no hope. The enemy is too strong for us.”

“He is very strong,” returned the missionary, “but God is stronger, and our cause is his cause. We have planted his standard here in the very midst of the enemy’s territory, and have not only held our ground for years, but gained some victories. If we had the people, the churches and the law-officers on our side, we could drive him out in a year. But we have no hope of this—at least not for a long time to come; and so, as wisely as we can, as earnestly as we can, and with the limited means at our control, we are fighting the foe and helping the weak, and gaining a little every year.”

“And you really think there is gain?”

“I know it,” answered the missionary, with a ringing confidence in his voice. “It is by comparisons that we are able to get at true results. Come with me into our school-room, next door.”

They passed from the office of the mission into the street.

“These buildings,” said Mr. Paulding, “erected by that true Christian charity which hopeth all things, stand upon the very site of one of the worst dens once to be found in this region. In them we have a chapel for worship, two large and well ventilated school-rooms, where from two to three hundred children that would not be admitted into any public school are taught daily, a hospital and dispensary and bathrooms. Let me show you the school. Then I will give you a measure of comparison.”

Mr. Dinneford went up to the school-rooms. He found them crowded with children, under the care of female teachers, who seemed to have but little trouble in keeping them in order. Such a congregation of boys and girls Mr. Dinneford had never seen before. It made his heart ache as he looked into some of their marred and pinched, faces, most of which bore signs of pain, suffering, want and evil. It moved him to tears when he heard them sing, led by one of the teachers, a tender hymn expressive of the Lord’s love for poor neglected children.

“The Lord Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost,” said the missionary as they came down from the school-room, “and we are trying to do the same work. And that our labor is not all in vain will be evident when I show you what this work was in the beginning. You have seen a little of what it is now.”

They went back to the office of the missionary.

“It is nearly twenty years,” said Mr. Paulding, “since the organization of our mission. The question of what to do for the children became at once the absorbing one. The only building in which to open a Sunday-school that could be obtained was an old dilapidated frame house used as a receptacle for bones, rags, etc.; but so forbidding was its aspect, and so noisome the stench arising from the putrefying bones and rotting rags, that it was feared for the health of those who might occupy it. However it was agreed to try the effect of scraping, scrubbing, white-washing and a liberal use of chloride of lime. This was attended with such good effects that, notwithstanding the place was still offensive to the olfactories, the managers concluded to open in it our first Sabbath-school.

“No difficulty was experienced in gathering in a sufficient number of children to compose a school; for, excited by such a novel spectacle as a Sabbath-school in that region, they came in crowds. But such a Sabbath-school as that first one was beyond all doubt the rarest thing of the kind that any of those interested in its formation had ever witnessed. The jostling, tumbling, scratching, pinching, pulling of hair, little ones crying and larger ones punching each other’s heads and swearing most profanely, altogether formed a scene of confusion and riot that disheartened the teachers in the start, and made them begin to think they had undertaken a hopeless task.

“As to the appearance of these young Ishmaelites, it was plain that they had rarely made the acquaintance of soap and water. Hands, feet and face exhibited a uniform crust of mud and filth. As it was necessary to obtain order, the superintendent, remembering that ‘music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,’ decided to try its effects on the untamed group before him; and giving out a line of a hymn adapted to the tune of ‘Lily Dale,’ he commenced to sing. The effect was instantaneous. It was like oil on troubled waters. The delighted youngsters listened to the first line, and then joined in with such hearty good-will that the old shanty rang again.

“The attempt to engage and lead them in prayer was, however, a matter of great difficulty. They seemed to regard the attitude of kneeling as very amusing, and were reluctant to commit themselves so far to the ridicule of their companions as to be caught in such a posture. After reading to them a portion of the Holy Scriptures and telling them of Jesus, they were dismissed, greatly pleased with their first visit to a Sabbath-school.

“As for ourselves, we had also received a lesson. We found—what indeed we had expected—that the poor children were very ignorant, but we also found what we did not expect—namely, such an acute intelligence and aptitude to receive instruction as admonished us of the danger of leaving them to grow up under evil influences to become master-spirits in crime and pests to society. Many of the faces that we had just seen were very expressive—indeed, painfully so. Some of them seemed to exhibit an unnatural and premature development of those passions whose absence makes childhood so attractive.