The southern enterprise. [volume] (Greenville, S.C.) 1854-1870, 1857-02-12
Origiual Drpartmrnt.
Written for ths Southern Enterprise.
POVERTY, AND COLD.

"e R'owing grate, one bitter,
freezing day last week. l had just come in,
and in few words she explained who the
poor woman" was. An hour before our
negro washerwoman, widow with three
children, had come weeping to my wife and
said her son had died the night before of
cough with which he had long been affiict-
ed. Some clergyman had written her case
on bit Of paper, and she was soliciting aid
to bury him. =.
l went early in the afternoon to the mum.
Der she gave, and was directed, with suIki.
ness, by slatternly. impudent mulatto girl,
to the fourth story Of a large, dingy brick
house, jammed between high walls, and APP
preached by dark, narrow passage some
distance in the heart of the square. groped
my way up six short flights of narrow, cold
stairs, in Egyptian darkness. On knocking
L was admitted. In a small room contain
ing bed, n small cook stove, with a few
common utensils, was the mother, a slight
made woman Of 35, and delicate little mu-
latto girl, almost white, who was performing
the Office of nurse to boy almost her own
size.
lhe woman talked away in tha most bu-
s'ness way about herself; said she had been
bought and freed by her faith er in Baltimore
when child, had come to New York, had
married, and was now widow with three
children. She then opened a door and
showed me the corpse of little mula,to
boy five years old, thin and emaeisted by
consumption, lying in little dark room
adjoining where her wash tubs were piled
up.
Here, then, in this little den. four stories
high, at $50 year rent, she lived, had all
the washing she could do, and made about
$3.50 week. With a ncgros improvidence
she bad saved nothing but 81 for rent, and
the result Of her days trudging was 25
csnts. She seemed more troubled about
how she was to get her boy into the ground
than anything else. After going a few
blocks | found an undertaken who agreed to
furnish coffin and take the child in the
same cart with another coffin to New York
Bay Cemetery at low rate, pledging my
self to see him paid. The next day called
at her room and found her at her wash tub.
She bad received no further aid, and giving
me the aonay shs bad, ! paid tho kind un
dertaker the rest of his bill myself She
did not think worth her while to say, 'Thank
you" Poverty, cold, hunger and death
must sometimes make human nature stolidly
Indifferent. And so left her, after seeing
that she had the 'wherewithal to buy food
and coal. Her case is quite comfortable.
though, to many thousand white people and
negroes in the city.
After these sights, and reading the ac-
counts of the daily press, and hearing the
appeals from the pulpit, to consider the poor,
/ am mora sorry than ever for misguided
theorists, who, with honest but mistaken
plans, endeavor to aid the negroes Of the
South; but with unmitigated abolitionists,
who, with all this in view, and more too,
kaap on inaamjng the people, havo less
patience than ever.
As contemplate that brick house. dingy
and cold, without furnace to heat, or croton
water or gas, $50 necessary here0 divided
into twelve rooms, occupied by about thirty
free negroes, I feel unhappy. Take that
woman as sample, She buys her coal by
the peck, brings water from the hydrant
across the street up those dark, weary stairs,
and frequently finishes her weeks work
ironing till one o'clock Sunday morning.
She must pay her $3.50 month, or leave.
When Sunday comes how much Gospel are
they ready to 60 aud hear, in churches
where pews are cheap at $50 renti What
hope has her old age to look tol What is
her son to do in a city where servants and
draymen are ninety nine.one-hundr dredths for
eigpers, and her daughter to follow her hope
ful vocation, or more likely, and much the
more probable, become . harloti
Take aa ordinary servant woman in
Greenville, with master who had two ideas
of human feeling and human necessities,
and make hsr understand that she was real
y to occupy thisroop, with the above pros