The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844

II

I imitate that charming rite
In this our sober day,
And, when I worship, strew sweet flowers
Along my angel’s way:
And, if my heart’s fond prayer be heard,
The offering I renew;
For flowers like books have leaves that speak,
And thoughts of every hue.

III

They are Love’s paper, pictured o’er
With gentle hopes and fears;
Their blushes are the smiles of Love,
And their soft dew his tears!
Ah! more than poet’s pen can write
Or poet’s tongue reveal
Is hidden by their folded buds
And by their rosy seal.

IV

Mute letters! yet how eloquent!
Expressive silence dwells
In every blossom Heaven creates,
Like sound in ocean shells.
Press to my flowers thy lips, beloved,
And then thy heart will see
Inscribed upon their leaves the words
I dare not breathe to thee!

THE ALMS HOUSE

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR

It is not my purpose in the following narrative to point out all the evils arising from the modern practice of relieving the wants of the poor and destitute which prevails in this country and in England, where the arm of the law compels that pittance which should be the voluntary donation of benevolence; one consequence of which system is, that the poor claim support as a debt due from society at large, and feel no gratitude toward any of the individuals paying the tax. The payer of the tax, on the other hand, feeling that he can claim no merit for surrendering that which is wrung from him by force, and expecting no thanks for the act, and knowing that in many cases it operates as a bounty on idleness, hates the ungrateful burthen thus imposed upon him, and strives to reduce it to the least possible amount. In this way the ties which should bind together the poor and the rich are sundered. The benevolence of the patron and the gratitude of the dependent, which formerly existed, is changed to dislike and suspicion on the one part, and envy and ingratitude on the other.

Doubtless one design of Providence in suffering want and misery to exist in the world, is that the benevolent virtues should be kept in exercise. He who was benevolence itself, seemed thus to think, when he said: ‘The poor ye have always with you.’ But man in his selfishness virtually says: ‘The poor we will not have with us; we will put them out of our sight.’ For in many towns in New-England, and probably in other States, it is customary to contract with some individual for their support; or, in other words, to sell them by auction, to him who will support them by the year, for the least sum per head. To illustrate some of the results of this system, the following incidents are related from memory, having been witnessed by me in my native place (an interior town in New-England) at an age when the feelings are most susceptible. And so deep was the impression then made on my mind, that I am enabled to vouch for the accuracy of the details.

A meeting for the purpose of disposing of the poor of the town for the ensuing year was held at the house of the person who had kept them the previous year, (and where these unfortunates still were) as well because it was supposed he would again bid for them, as that those who wished to become competitors might ascertain their number and condition. It was in the afternoon of a day in November, one of those dark and dreary days so common to the season and climate, adding gloom to the surrounding objects, in themselves sufficiently cheerless. The house was situated on an obscure road in a remote part of the town, surrounded by level and sandy fields; and the monotony of the prospect only broken by scattered clumps of dwarf-pine and shrub-oak; a few stunted apple-trees, the remains of an orchard which the barren soil had refused to nourish; some half ruinous out-houses, and a meagre kitchen garden enclosed with a common rough fence, completed the picture without.

Still more depressing was the scene within. The paupers were collected in the same room with their more fortunate townsmen, that the bidders might be enabled to view more closely their condition, and estimate the probable expense of supporting them through the year. Many considerations entered as items into this sordid calculation; such as the very lowest amount of the very coarsest food which would suffice, (not to keep them in comfort, but to sustain their miserable existence for the next three hundred and sixty-five days, and yet screen the provider from the odium of having starved his victims,) the value of the clothes they then wore, and thus the future expense of their clothing; and other such considerations, which I will not farther disgust the reader by enumerating.

They were about twenty in number, and not greatly distinguished from the ordinary poor of a country town in New-England; unless by there being present three idiot daughters of one poor man, whose low and narrow foreheads, sunken temples, fixed but dead and unmeaning eyes, half opened and formless mouths, indicating even to childhood the absence of that intellectual light, which in those who possess it shines through the features. Insanity also was there, that most dreadful infliction of Providence; the purpose of which lies hidden in the darkness which surrounds His throne. Its unhappy subject was with them, but not of them. His eyes were fixed upon the scene, but the uncertain fire which illumined his features was caused by thoughts which had no connection with the passing scene.

Vice, too, had its representatives; for in a community where wealth is nearly the only source of distinction, and where Mammon is consequently worshipped as the true god, the destiny of the unfortunate and of the vicious is nearly the same. And the ‘poor-house’ was used, as in other towns in New-England, as a house of correction, and at this time contained several professors of vice of each sex. Alas! of that sex which when corrupt is more dangerous than the other in a like condition, as the most rich and grateful things are in their decay the most noxious!

The remaining number consisted of the aged and childless widow, the infirm and friendless old man, the sick, the deformed, and the cripple; the virtuous poor, in forced and loathed contact with vice and infamy. Those of society who in life’s voyage had been stranded on the bleak and barren coast of charity, and who were now waiting for death to float them into the ocean of eternity. While this scene was passing at the alms-house, another connected with it, and fitted to excite still deeper feelings, was acting in another part of the town.

A person who was that year one of the select-men,[1 - Men who are yearly selected by the inhabitants to superintend the business of the town, and who, among other duties, have the charge of managing the poor.] and a deacon in the church, was delegated by his colleagues to bring to the alms-house the ‘lone woman’ who forms the chief subject of our homely story. The widow Selden (a brief history of whom it will be necessary to give) had received an education suited rather to the respectability and former wealth of her family, than to its subsequent reduced condition, became in early life the wife of a merchant of our village, a man of good character and fair prospects, to whom she was much attached. Traders in New-England where wealth is so eagerly sought, are, especially in country towns, men of much consideration, as engaged in a money-making business. Mrs. Selden, therefore, independently of her personal merits, was not likely to be neglected. Her company was sought by the best society of our place, and she exchanged visits on equal terms even with the families of the clergyman and the village lawyer.

A few years of quiet enjoyment passed, happily varied by the accession of a fair and delicate little girl, who might be seen at their cheerful meals seated in her high chair, the common object of their care and attention; and not only affording in her fragile little person the strongest bond of union, but the never-tiring subject of conversation. Sad indeed was the change in this once happy family, when the widow and orphan sat alone at the cheerless board. Death had entered and taken from them the sun of their little world. The bereaved wife might have sunk under this calamity, had not maternal solicitude been mixed with grief. With that admirable fortitude and submission to duty so common to those of her sex in similar circumstances, she at once devoted herself with increased solicitude to the remaining object of her care and affection.

For a time but little change was visible in the family arrangements, for though a sensitive she was a spirited woman. Her garden, which had been the pride and delight of her husband, still flourished in perfect neatness. After the usual time of decent seclusion, she again interchanged visits with her friends and neighbors, and continued to maintain the stand in the village society which had always been conceded to her. But this state of things did not long continue, for alas! the gathering as well as the protecting hand was removed. Her more aristocratic acquaintances now began to remark that her table showed less of plenty and variety than formerly, and that her dress, though perfectly neat, was less new and fashionable than they expected in their associates; for no where is the distinction between the rich and poor more rigidly enforced than in country villages. Most offensively marked is this distinction in the house of God, where if any where this side the grave ought the rich and the poor to meet on a level, before Him who regards not the outward estate of his creatures. But modern Christians have contrived to evade the rebuke of the apostle by the cunning device of introducing the noisy auctioneer, and under a show of fairness and equality, ‘the man in goodly apparel and having a gold ring’ is assigned the highest seat; and albeit a skeptic, by the weight of his purse crowds the humble worshippers to the wall and into the corners of their Father’s house.

It was observed that the lone woman declined competition for those seats so eagerly sought by the more wealthy, and selected those of a humbler character, and eventually retired to the ‘widow’s pew,’ a pew set apart, in country churches, for the gratuitous accommodation of those in that unhappy condition. Sincerely religious, the Christian widow still waited upon God in the house of prayer, but felt the whole sting of poverty when slowly and humbly wending her way to her obscure corner, her faded and well-worn dress was brushed by the new and rich garments of her former equals as they swept past her to their high seats. The neat and handsome dwelling with its trim garden was at length resigned for one which barely sheltered the mother and child from the weather, and was totally devoid of the cheap luxury of fruit and flowers which had enriched and beautified their former home.

Time wore on, and Want with its train of sordid attendants visited their dwelling. Her former associates, one after another declined her society as an equal. Occasionally calling, they were eloquent in excuses for their neglect; for when did the prosperous lack an excuse for neglecting the unfortunate? Counsel and advice were lavished upon her; for I have observed that advice is the only thing that the rich impart freely to the poor. Religion too was the frequent subject of their conversation; for how can benevolence be shown more strongly than by a concern for the well-being of the soul, which is to exist forever, in comparison with which, the transient wants of the body are as nothing? Accordingly, the poor widow, after her scanty meal, and over her dim and cheerless hearth, was exhorted by her fur-clad and well-fed friends, to disregard the evils of this fleeting life, and receive with resignation the chastenings of Providence; for we all needed correction, being by nature utterly sinful and depraved. And after some vague and indefinite offers of assistance, the good women would take their leave. A way of discharging duty discovered by modern philanthropists; and when accompanied by the Societies’ tract, seldom fails to convince the unfortunate object of charity that to Heaven alone should they look for assistance and sympathy.

This lady, as we have intimated, possessed a large share of that generous spirit so common in her sex, which enabled her to sustain herself amid the evils which oppressed her. And nobly did the mother strive to shield from want and ignorance the little orphan, now her only care. Her own education enabled her in some measure to supply the place of teachers, which she was unable to employ. And never was maternal care better rewarded than by the improvement of the gentle being under her charge. But in this blessed employment the poor mother was interrupted. While health continued, she had been enabled by the most unremitted exertion to prevent the approach of absolute want, slight indeed as were her earnings. (The modern improvements in machinery having destroyed domestic manufacture, properly so called, and left but little for the female to earn who is not attending its motions in the noisy factory.) But illness had intervened, and diminished even that small resource; and it was apparent to all that the want of suitable food assisted in blanching still more the fair face of the poor child. Maternal love had conquered the honest pride of the poor mother so far as to constrain her to accept the slight and uncertain donations of her neighbors. But this assistance, scanty as it was, could not continue. The tax-paying husbands of the benevolent ladies who furnished it, complained that the poor-rates were heavy, and that they had already helped to pay for a house of refuge for the poor and the destitute, could not, in addition to this, support them out of it.

She was told it was her duty to place her daughter in some family to be brought up as a servant. In vain did she assert her ability to maintain herself and child when health should return. Her advisers could little sympathize with her feelings, and reproached her with pride. And she was now harassed with the fear that her delicate and cultivated little girl would be torn from her, and made a factory slave or household drudge; for such power had the laws given to the rulers of the town. But this fear, miserable as it was, was now overpowered by another. The suggestion had reached the ear of the unhappy woman that she and her child would be conveyed to the house of the town’s poor, the place we have attempted to describe. God grant that no fair reader of this homely but too true story should ever feel the misery which this fear inflicted on the mind of this friendless mother! Oh, that true Charity had been present in the person of her best representative on earth, a sensible, affectionate and liberal-minded woman, to minister to the wants, to soothe the mind of her unhappy sister-woman, and cheer her exertions for self-support! None such appeared, and the heart of the poor woman sank within her. Her exertions were paralyzed; for struggle as she might to avoid it, the alms-house, with its debased and debasing society, was ever before her eyes as her ultimate destiny. It was in vain that she endeavored to prepare her mind for this result. She could endure any degree of privation, but not degradation and infamy.

Time wore on, without any renewed hints of interference, and she began to hope that she was forgotten. Delusive hope! It was felt as a disgrace that she should suffer, when the law had provided a remedy, and they had paid for it. And it was therefore decreed by the magnates of the town that she must be removed, and the day had arrived (with which we commenced our narrative,) on which the paupers were to be disposed of for the coming year. Deacon S– was the person deputed by his colleagues, as we have mentioned, to convey Mrs. Selden and her daughter to the alms-house.

However prepared we may suppose ourselves to meet misfortune, the moment of its arrival takes us by surprise. We will not attempt to picture the utter desolation of mind and the despair which filled her heart, when this man arrived at her door, to convey herself, and oh! far worse, her innocent and intelligent child, to that scene of vice and debasement. Although her dislike to the measure was known, yet from her quiet and reserved manners, little opposition was anticipated. The evils of life had accumulated upon her in a regular gradation, and she had been enabled to bear their weight, up to this point, with outward composure; looking forward to, but yet hoping this last cup of bitterness would never be presented; or if presented, that some means might be found to avert it. But the dreadful crisis had arrived. Had the whole board of authority been present, I should be glad to believe, for the honor of humanity, that they would have been moved to relent, as they would not have been able to shift the responsibility from one to the other, as is the wont of such bodies when the members act separately.

When the poor woman had so far recovered from the first shock as to be enabled to articulate, she pleaded her ability to maintain herself without assistance, and her choice rather to starve than be removed. She appealed to him as the father of a daughter, and painted the ruin which would fall upon her own, exposed to the corruption and example of the place to which he was taking her. She appealed to him as a Christian, and reminded him that they had sat together before the sacred desk, and partaken of the symbols of the body and blood of the Son of Him who was in a peculiar manner the father of the widow and orphan. But her auditor was destitute of the imagination which enables the possessor to enter into the feelings of another; and these affecting appeals fell dead upon his worldly and unsympathizing nature. The man even extended his hand to urge her forward to the conveyance provided! At that moment, when all hope was dead within her, and the worst that could happen in her opinion had arrived, a change came over the unhappy woman. She suffered herself unresistingly to be led forward to her doom. The fine chords of the mind and heart, lately so intensely strung, had parted; her countenance relaxed, and her features settled down into a dead, unmeaning apathy; never again, during the short remainder of her life, to be animated by one gleam of the feelings which had so lately illumined but to destroy.

My kind, my indulgent mother! Her generous heart needed not the eloquence of my youthful feelings to induce her to rescue the poor orphan, and to cherish her as her own child. And never was kindness more richly–

I had proceeded thus far in writing this narrative, when I discovered that I was overlooked; and a gentle voice over my shoulder said: ‘You should not praise your own wife; it is the same as if you should praise yourself!’

    E. B.

APOSTROPHE TO HEALTH

Hygeia! most blest of the powers
That tenant the mansions divine,
May I pass in thy presence the hours
That remain, ere in death I recline!

Dwell with me, benevolent charm!
Without the attendance of health
Not the smiles of affection can warm,
And dull are the splendors of wealth.

The pageant of empire is stale
That lifts men like gods o’er their race,
And the heart’s thrilling impulses fail
When Love beckons on to the chase.

Whate’er in itself joy can give,
Or that springs from sweet respite of pain,
That mortals or gods can receive,
Blest Hygeia! is found in thy train!

Thy smile kindles up the fresh spring,