This then is our pledge, made over that dying boy, and, worse than by murder, widowed mother, and here now we redeem it. Here we expose the hydra-headed monster--the orphan and widow-maker--the property, health, and virtue-destroyer. Sad, harrowing as these scenes of wretchedness and misery are, they must be laid open to the gaze of the world. "Wounds must be seen to be healed." Weak nerves tremble at the idea that physicians cut and carve the dead, talking, aye laughing, as freely over the quiet heart and still nerves in the dissecting-room, as the butcher over his beef upon the market house block; yet without the dissecting of one and butchering of the other, how should the maimed be healed, or meat-eating multitude be fed? So let us on with our panorama of scenes from life in New York.
[Illustration: OLD PLATO COOKING HOT CORN.--_Page 321._]
Let us open this door. Ah! we have been here before.
The room is seven by twelve feet, under the roof, which comes down at one end within a foot of the floor. There is a broken, dirty, window in the roof, at the right hand of the door as we enter on the side. No fire-place or stove, no table, only two broken chairs--a very old bureau--a dilapidated trunk--a band-box--a few articles of female apparel--some poor dishes and a few cooking utensils--used upon a little portable furnace standing in the room--a poor old bedstead and straw bed in one corner--a child's cot and a doll; and yet the only occupant of the room is an old negro man, who sits of nights upon cold stones, crying Hot Corn. We look about wonderingly, peering in here and there, but except the old man we see no one.
"She gone, massa, clean gone--cry old eyes out when I come home next day arter dat one, you know massa, which one dis child mean--sad day--don't like to mention him, massa--give me chaw terbacca, massa--come home and find her and little sis--nice child dat--"
"No sir, found her gone--done gone entirely--key in old place where I knew where to find him--everything all here--no word for old Plato--what I give to see her once more--to see little Sissee--Oh that I knew where she was. Oh, oh, oh."
"And would to Heaven we could tell what has become of her."
"Who?" said the lady who had been listening with intense interest to my narrative.