Democratic enquirer. [volume] (M'arthur, Vinton County, Ohio) 1867-1873, 1868-10-08
The Hidden Sights Of New York.

| IN. Y. Correspondence OF PROVIDENCE Press
We turned into Five Points, and went
into some of the lodging houses.
Think of thirteen persons crouched in
one small room, without window, or any
hole but the door Male and female,
black and white, little children--all bund-
led in heap together on the dirty straw.
The air was like pest house. One glance
was enough-one taste of that air will last
life time. II was q clean lodging place.
Cheap indeed it was--and nasty Pound
ing at one door for admission brought out
comely-looking black woman. "Rouse
up your husband, / must see him, said
the detective. The husband came; he was
white mani "They have lived together
as man and wife over two years" Sharp
em said to me afterward, "and they get
along first-rate.
Here was place where children lived.
Two or three rooms, in battered old
shanty that shook with every step over its
floors. The children were homeless ones,
fatherless and motherless, turned out to
live or die, as might be, in the streets of
careless, needless New York. Here they
come to sleep, paying the old hag who
kept the room six cents a night. By day
they tramp the city, getting living in any
way they could best. They we're cuddled
around the rooms under scanty, dirty
blankets, and kept warm by wretched
stove glowing feebly in one corner.
Most of them were boys, none over
twelve years; wedged in with them,
though, were some hungry-looking girls,
in whose faces the hard lines Of want, and
- Il
ready II made me heartsick to look at
them-lonely strays Poor, motherless
things May He in infinite love and mercy
forget thee not
Down in the cellar was gang Of rag
pickers. They were getting ready for work,
and with hook and basket would soon be
out, over the city, working their business.
Piles of rags, bones, offal, broken iron filed
the place, save where few articles of fur
niture stood. They were Italians, and not
disposed to be sociable. One had his bed
luxuriously arranged ona pile of old carpet
rags, . ahich we're damp and noisome with
the mud of the streets These rag-pickers
manage to make money in their dirty way;
they save it, too, and some of these years
they will go home to their country and en-
JOJ IT, 1uo WOnlCu WIN Do uhfu uo buS
men, live as roughly, have no shame or de-
cency about sexual matters, are as strong
limbed. asked the age of one of the wo-
men who seemed rather more disposed to
talk than the others. She was thirty-one
/ should have said fifty. She had not
one trace Of youth left--a hard, weather.
beaten face, body bent and unhinged, o.
slow, plodding step and wrinkles coming.
She had been in New York seven years-all
the time rag-picker Had she got rich
enough to go back2 Rich enough and
she smiled-'1 have two children in Italy
that my money is educating. They don't
know their poor mother, poor dears. but /
shall work hard for them, and sometime |
will go back and see them r This woman
carried bag and fished in cutters and re-
fuse barrels, from four in the morning till
past sunrise, came home and sorted rags
and offal all day in close, damp cellar;
and yet there was tender, romantic senti-
ment in her life which made her look not
to herself but to her little ones. May she
have her wish and 90 back to them.