The Middlebury galaxy. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1848-1850, 1848-04-04
P DOR JOHN N Y.
BY MRS. ANN s. STEPHENS.

settled portions of New York, is one of the
most beautiful little islands that you ever set
eyes upon. Just where the banks of the East
River are the most broken and picturesque on
the main bottom shore, and the sunny slopes
of Long Island are most verdant in their area
dian beauty, the river opens It's bright waters,
and Blackwel's Island rises, green, verdant,
and beautiful from its azure bosom. Beauti-
full, even now, is that island but it was more
so, years ago, when its holows were fragrant
with wild roses, haunted with black-birds and
thrushes when its shores were hedged in with
the snow-white lockwood, wild cherry and ma
pie trees, joined together with scarlet ivy and
a thousand clinging vines, that even now hang
along its shores, like torn banhers left on a
battle field. Then, the island must have seem
ed a miles length OF Paradise chopped into the
waters-but now, alas, Blackwell's Island has
other inhabitants than the singing birds, and
the sweet wild blossoms. It's eXtremities are
burdened, and crushed down, as it were, to the
very waters edge, with an cdifce of massive
stone. while human crime and human misery
are crowded together in masses appalling to
reflect upon.
On one end of the island, naturally so quiet
and beautiful, rises the rugged walls Of the
Penitentiary, flanked by out houses, hospitals,
|
human degradation. Here, thousand wretch
ed beings, bowed with misery and branded
with crime, are crowded together. All the
day long. herds Of these degraded beings may
be seen in their coarse and faded uniform,
burrowing in the earth blasting and shaping
the rocks that are TO form new prison walls,
and filling the sweet air with groans and ours
es, which once thrilled only to the Summer
bird songs
AT the other extremity of the island stands
the Insane Asylum, beautiful pile, towering
proudly over 4 scene of misery that is enough
| to make the heart humble with awe and SYM
pathy. From its grated windows you may
hear everysound, horrid Or pathetic, in which
the insane mind expresses itsrayings AT
| window is a wild face peering through the bars
and looking wisttully at the passer by with eyes
| full-of entrcatv. and the wan hand waving
fainter and fainter as the wild gesture is I'M
| needed; from another shrieks ring out upon
the water, rs the poor maniac calls for his moth
cr to come out from the woods-a beautiful
grove that rises atar off on the Longlsand shore.
''Mother- mother, come, come, have wait
cd have pleaded have prayed for YOU to
come. Mother mother"
This IS the daily cry Of poor German boy.
The fisherman hears it as he glides by the
walls of that gloomy mad-house, and lifts his
or with a sort of terror, as if his own freedom
were a mockery to the poor creatures blocked
in by those massive and iron-grt walls from the
sweet sunny air-the passengers that float by
in our palace steamboats, sometimes hear wild
shout, rising even above the noise of the en-
zine, and see an arm thrust wildly through the
iron bars Of the window where this boy Is CON
iined-and in the still night, that cry Of 'mo-
Their, mother, come" rings over the woods and
lies in plaintivc murmurs amid the roar and
turmoil of Hell Gate"
Other sounds there are issuing from that lis
nal iwei ing curses that chill the blood
plcadings that might melt heart of stone
wild, riotous laughter, and wit, often more
keen and satiric;ll than springs from the most
brilliant intellect. Besides all this amount Of.
living misery, every association, painful or hor-
rid, seems crowded on this beautiful spot
there is a little mound scarcely stones throw
from the water, and surmounted bv motley
trimmed apple tree, that looks like some pref
ty mllock, left by the gardener as 4 pleasant
object TO greet the poor maniac as he gazes from
the window OF his cell. Quiet and verdant il
seems, with the calm sunshine sleeping on it.
and the shadow of the slender tree pencilled
lelicately on the sward, as if nothing less beau
tiful had ever touched its surface. Yet that is
the gallows tree! Under its Young boughS
year after year, was the fatal timbers reared
from which one human soul after another was
rudely thrust into eternity. That soft grass. so
bright and beautiful, has been trodden over
and over by the executoner. Those young
boughs have tremblcd to the death-agony of
many wretched convict. Legally murdered
amid the shouts, the sneers, the horror of his
fellow men-and yet the scene from that tree
is so beautiful, the blue cxpanse of the river
sweep around one broad mirror of sunshinc-i
and water. The shores all around are indent-
ed into fairy promontories, and rise in the most
beautiful slopes that ever gave birth to world
of wild flowers. Close by, the waters of "Ilell |
Gate toss up their foam, and sparkle in the |
sunshine, and in the purple distance sleeps |
many a scene of rural loneliness that is more |
than arcadian in its rural beauty. Yet with all |
this beauty slumbering around, there stood the |
gallows tree-there looms the Insane Asylum. |
and there the black Penitentiary is sequester-
cd like some loathsomc monster upon the spot |
which was not many years since perfect jun |
gle ofsweet briar and swamp roses.
Am | wrong then in saving that on this lit |
tie slip Of earth is kneaded together more of
human wretchedness than can be found in the |
same space throughout the length and breadth |
Of our land. The moment your foot touches |
the shore you feel oppressed with the crowd OF
feeling that seems inexphcable-pit horror &
apainful blending of both crowd upon the heart
with every breath you draw. Nothing but the
air seems free; nothing but the blue sky a
bove seems pure, as you walk from one scene
of distress TO another You feel the more op-
pressed because human effort seems so power
less to alleviate the misery you witness All
that humanity can accomplish; all that sympa-
thy can do to alleviate distress, is already ex-
tended by those who are entrusted to regulate
the charities of a great city-but what can
minister to a mind diseased? What can take
away the defor1nity and the sting of guilt
Where lies the power to lift pauperism from
the degradation that the naughty and evil spir-
it of man has flung aroundit ? The very heart
grows faint as it beats in this wilderness ofwoe,
and finds no fitting answer to questions like
these.