Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880.

AN UNFINISHED PAGE OF HISTORY

I can easily understand why educated Americans cross the Atlantic every year in shoals in search of the picturesque; and I can understand, too, all that they say of the relief which ivied ruins and cathedrals and galleries, or any other reminders of past ages, give to their eyes, oppressed so long by our interminable rows of store-box houses, our pasteboard villas, the magnificence of our railway accommodations for Ladies and Gents, and all the general gaseous glitter which betrays how young and how rich we are. But I cannot understand why it is that their eyes, thus trained, should fail to see the exceptional picturesqueness of human life in this country. The live man is surely always more dramatic and suggestive than a house or a costume, provided we have eyes to interpret him; and this people, as no other, are made up of the moving, active deposits and results of world-old civilizations and experiments in living.

Outwardly, if you choose, the country is like one of the pretentious houses of its rich citizens—new, smug, complacently commonplace—but within, like the house again, it is filled with rare bits gathered out of every age and country and jumbled together in utter confusion. If you ride down Seventh street in a horse-car, you are in a psychological curio-shop. On one side, very likely, is a Russian Jew just from the Steppes; on the other, a negro with centuries of heathendom and slavery hinting themselves in lip and eye; the driver is a Fenian, with the blood of the Phoenicians in his veins; in front of you is a gentleman with the unmistakable Huguenot nose, and chin; while an almond-eyed pagan, disguised behind moustache and eye-glasses, courteously takes your fare and drops it for you in the Slawson box. Nowhere do all the elements of Tragedy and Comedy play so strange a part as on the dead-level of this American stage. It is because it is so dead a level that we fail to see the part they play—because "furious Goth and fiery Hun" meet, not on the battle-field, but in the horse-car, dropping their cents together in a Slawson box.

For example, as to the tragedy.

I met at dinner not long ago a lady who was introduced to me under a French name, but whose clear olive complexion, erect carriage and singular repose of manner would indicate her rather to be a Spaniard. She wore a red rose in the coils of her jetty hair, and another fastened the black lace of her corsage. Her eyes, which were slow, dark and brilliant, always rested on you an instant before she spoke with that fearless candor which is not found in the eyes of a member of any race that has ever been enslaved. I was told that her rank was high among her own people, and in her movements and voice there were that quiet simplicity and total lack of self-consciousness which always belong either to a man or woman of the highest breeding, or to one whose purpose in life is so noble as to lift him above all considerations of self. Although a foreigner, she spoke English with more purity than most of the Americans at the table, but with a marked and frequent recurrence of forcible but half-forgotten old idioms; which was due, as! learned afterward, to her having had no book of English literature to study for several years but Shakespeare. I observed that she spoke but seldom, and to but one person at a time; but when she did, her casual talk was the brimming over of a mind of great original force as yet full and unspent. She was, besides, a keen observer who had studied much, but seen more.

This lady, in a word, was one who would deserve recognition by the best men and women in any country; and she received it here, as many of the readers of Lippincott, who will recognize my description, will remember. She was caressed and feted by literary and social celebrities in Washington and New York; Boston made much of her; Longfellow and Holmes made verses in her honor; prying reporters gave accounts of her singular charm and beauty to the public in the daily papers.

She was accompanied by two of the men of her family. They did not speak English, but they were men of strong practical sense and business capacity, with the odd combination in their character of that exaggerated perception of honorable dealing which we are accustomed to call chivalric. They had, too, a grave dignity and composure of bearing which would have befitted Spanish hidalgos, and beside which our pert, sociable American manner and slangy talk were sadly belittled. These men (for I had a reason in making particular inquiries concerning them) were in private life loyal friends, good citizens, affectionate husbands and fathers—in a word, Christian men, honest from the marrow to the outside.

Now to the strange part of my story, revolting enough to our republican ears. This lady and her people, in the country to which they belong, are held in a subjection to which that of the Russian serf was comparative freedom. They are held legally as the slaves not of individuals, but of the government, which has absolute power over their persons, lives and property. Its manner of exercising that power is, however, peculiar. They are compelled to live within certain enclosures. Each enclosure is ruled by a man of the dominant race, usually of the lower class, who, as a rule, gains the place by bribing the officer of government who has charge of these people. The authority of this man within the limits of the enclosure is literally as autocratic as that of the Russian czar. He distributes the rations intended by the government for the support of these people, or such part of them as he thinks fit, retaining whatever amount he chooses for himself. There is nothing to restrain him in these robberies. In consequence, the funds set aside by the government for the support of its wretched dependants are stolen so constantly by the officers at the capital and the petty tyrants of the separate enclosures that the miserable creatures almost yearly starve and freeze to death from want. Their resource would be, of course, as they are in a civilized country, to work at trades, to farm, etc. But this is not permitted to them. Another petty officer is appointed in each enclosure to barter goods for the game or peltry which they bring in or crops that they manage to raise. He fixes his own price for both his goods and theirs, and cheats them by wholesale at his leisure. There is no appeal: they are absolutely forbidden to trade with any other person. The men of my friend's family—educated men and shrewd in business as any merchant of Philadelphia—when at home were liable to imprisonment and a fine of five hundred dollars if they bought from or sold to any other person than this one man. They are, too, taught no trade or profession. Each enclosure has its appointed blacksmith, carpenter, etc. of the dominant class, who, naturally, will not share their profits by teaching their trade to the others.

Within the enclosures my friend and her people, no matter how enlightened or refined they may be, are herded, and under the same rules, as so many animals. They cannot leave the enclosure without passes, such as were granted to our slaves before the war when they wished to go outside of the plantation. This woman, when seated at President Hayes's table, the equal in mind and breeding of any of her companions, was, by the laws of her country, a runaway, legally liable to be haled by the police back to her enclosure, and shot if she resisted. She and her people are absolutely unprotected by any law. It is indeed the only case, so far as I know, in any Christian country, in which a single class are so set aside, unprotected by any law. When our slaves were killed or tortured by inhuman masters, there was at least some show of justice for them. The white murderer went through some form of trial and punishment. The slave, though a chattel, was still a human being. But these people are not recognized by the law as human beings. They cannot buy nor sell; they cannot hold property: if with their own hands they build a house and gather about them the comforts of civilization and the wife and children to which the poorest negro, the most barbarous savage, has a right, any man of the dominant class can, without violating any law, take possession of the house, ravage the wife and thrust the children out to starve. The wrong-doer is subject to no penalty. The victim has no right of appeal to the courts. Hence such outrages are naturally of daily occurrence. Not only are they perpetrated on individuals, but frequently there is a raid made upon the whole of the inmates of one enclosure—whenever, in fact, the people in the neighborhood fancy they would like to take possession of their land. The kinsmen of my friend, with their clan numbering some seven hundred souls—a peaceable, industrious Christian community, living on land which had belonged to their ancestors for centuries—were swept off of it a few years ago at the whim of two of their rulers: their houses and poor little belongings were all left behind, and they were driven a thousand miles into a sterile, malarious region where nearly half of their number died. The story of their sufferings, their homesickness and their despair on the outward journey, and of how still later some thirty of them returned on foot, carrying the bones of those who had died to lay them in their old homes, is one of the most dramatic pages in history. De Quincey's "Flight of a Tartar Clan" does not equal it in pathos or as a story of heroism and endurance. At the end of their homeward journey, when almost within sight of their homes, the heroic little band were seized by order of the ruler of their enclosure and committed to prison. The tribe are still in the malarious swamps to which they were exiled. Strangers hold their farms and the houses which they built with their own hands.

The anomalous condition of a people legally ranking as animals, and not human beings, would naturally produce unpleasant consequences when they are criminally the aggressors. When they steal or kill they cannot be tried, sent to jail or hung as if they were human in the eye of the law. The ruler of each enclosure is granted arbitrary power in such cases to punish at his discretion. He is judge, jury, and often executioner. He has a control over the lives of these people more absolute than that of any Christian monarch over his subjects. If he thinks proper to shoot the offender, he can call upon the regular army of the country to sustain him. If the individual offender escapes, the whole of the inmates of the enclosure are held responsible, and men, women and children are slaughtered by wholesale and without mercy.

My readers understand my little fable by this time. It is no fable, but a disgraceful truth.

The government under which a people—many of whom are educated, enlightened Christian gentlemen—are denied the legal rights of human beings and all protection of law is not the absolute despotism of Siara or Russia, but the United States, the republic which proclaims itself the refuge for the oppressed of all nations—the one spot on earth where every man is entitled alike to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The only people in the world to whom it denies these rights are not its quondam slaves, not pagans, not runaway convicts, not the offscourings of any nation however degraded, but the original owners of the country.

The legal disability under which the Indian is held is as much of an outrage on human rights, and as bald a contradiction of the doctrines on which our republic is based, as negro slavery was.

R.H.D.

A LITTLE IRELAND IN AMERICA

The humorous side of life was never more vividly brought before me than while living a few years ago in the vicinity of an Irish settlement in one of the suburbs of New York. What we call "characters" were to be found in every cottage—the commonplace was the exception. Indeed, I do not remember that it existed at all in "The Lane," as this locality was called.

Perhaps among the inhabitants of The Lane none more deserved distinction than Mary Magovern. The grandmother of a numerous family, she united all the masculine and feminine virtues. About the stiff, spotless and colossal frill of her cap curled wreaths of smoke from her stout dhudeen as she sat before the door blacking the small boots of her grandchildren, stopping from time to time to remove the pipe from her mouth, that she might deliver in her full bass voice a peremptory order to the large yellow dog that lay at her feet. It was usually on the occasion of a carriage passing, when the dog would growl and rise. Very quickly out came the pipe, and immediately followed the words, "Danger, lay by thim intintions;" and the pipe was used as an indicator for the next movement—namely, to patiently lie down again upon the ground.

Mary Magovern kept a drinking-shop behind the living-rooms of her cottage, and the immense prestige she had in The Lane must have had some foundation in the power which this thriving business gave her, many of her neighbors being under the obligation of debt to her.

Mike Quinlan would have been her most frequent visitor had it not been for the ever-open eye of Mrs. Quinlan, which caused her husband to seek his delights by stealth at a village a mile away. Mike was an elderly and handsome man, but his wits had ebbed out as the contents of the wine-cup flowed in, and the beauty that had won so remarkable a person as Mrs. Quinlan in its first glow was somewhat marred. He was the owner of a small cart and a mule, and those who had stones or earth to move usually remembered to employ poor Mike. But it was on foot, as a more inconspicuous method of eluding the watchfulness of Mrs. Quinlan, that Mike slipped away to the neighboring village of an afternoon, and it was on foot that I one night saw Mrs. Quinlan going over the same road with an invincible determination in her countenance and a small birch rod in her hand. Mrs. Quinlan was somewhat younger than her lord and master: she had a clear, bright-blue eye, a roseate color in her little slender face, and gray hair tidily smoothed back beneath the dainty ruffles of her cap, about which a black ribbon was tied. She wore short petticoats and low shoes, and as she walked briskly along she smoothed her apron with the disengaged hand, as if, the balance of the family respectability having so wholly fallen upon her own shoulders, she would not disturb it by permitting a disorderly wrinkle. Half an hour later she passed again over the road, her face turned homeward and wearing an even greater austerity, the birch rod grasped firmly in her hand, and her worser half preceding her with a foolish smile upon his lips, half of concession, half of pride in the power to which he stooped.

Another of Mrs. Magovern's occasional visitors was Old Haley, who had regular employment upon our own place. Like Mike Quinlan, he rejoiced in a wife who was an ornament to her sex—a most respectable, handsome and intelligent woman, though education had done little to sharpen her wits or widen her experience. She could tell a one from a five dollar bill, as her husband would proudly inform you, and she could cook a dinner, do up a skirt or a frilled cap, keep a house or tend a sick friend, as well as any woman in the land. "Maggie's a janeous!" her husband would remark with a look of intense admiration.

One evening Mrs. Haley made her appearance at our house, asking for an audience of my mother. The object was to inform her—these sympathetic people like to be advised in all their affairs—that being in need of various household supplies she proposed on the following day to go to the city and purchase them at the Washington Market.

"I suppose you have been to the city before, Mrs. Haley?" remarked my mother.

"I have not, ma'am," said Mrs. Haley.

"Had you not better take some friend with you who has been there before, lest you should get lost?"

"Faith, I had, ma'am: I had a right to have moor sinse an' think o' that."

So Mrs. Haley departed, returning again in company with Mary Magovern: "Here's Mary Magovern, ma'am: she's goin' along wid me."

"Ah, that's very well.—You know the city, Mary? you've been there?"

"I have not, ma'am."

"Why, what, then, is the use of your going with Mrs. Haley?"

"We'll make a shtrict inquiry, ma'am."

The next morning they started, and at four o'clock Old Haley came in much anxiety of mind to seek comfort of my mother: "Maggie's not come, ma'am. Faith, I'm throubled, for the city is a quare place."

When it grew late Haley returned again and again, in ever-increasing anxiety, to be reassured. At last, when the family were retiring to bed, came Mrs. Haley and Mrs. Magovern to report their arrival. In spite of the lateness of the hour my mother received them, and in spite of their wearied and worn faces administered a gentle rebuke for the anxiety that Mrs. Haley had caused her spouse.

"Well, indade it's no wonder he was throubled," said Mrs. Haley, "an' it's a wonder we got here at all. We got nothing at the Washington Market, for we couldn't find it at all: I think they tuk it away to Washington. It was in the mornin' airly that we got to the city, ma'am, an' there was a koind of a carr, an' a gintleman up on the top of it, an' anuther gintleman at the dure of it, wid the dure in his hand, an' he sez, sez he, 'Git in, ladies,' sez he.—'We're goin' to the Washington Market, sur,' sez I.—That's where I'll take yez, ladies,' sez he. 'Pay yer fares, ladies.' An' we got in, ma'am, an' wint up to the top of the city, an' paid tin cints, the both of us. An' there was a great many ladies an' gintlemen got in an' done the same, ma'am, an' some got out one place an' some another. An' whin we got up to the top of the city, 'Mrs. Magovern,' sez I,' this isn't the Washington Market,' sez I.—' It is not, Mrs. Haley,' sez she.—'We'll git out, Mrs. Magovern,' sez I.—'We will, Mrs. Haley,' sez she. An' thin, ma'am, there was a small bit of a howl in the carr, and it was through the howl the ladies an' gintlemen would cry out to the gintleman on the top o' the carr, and he'd put his face down forninst it an' spake wid thim; an' I cried up through the howl to him, an' sez I, 'Me an' Mrs. Magovern will git out, sur,' sez I, 'for this isn't the Washington Market at all.'—'It is not, ma'am,' sez he, 'but that's where I'll take yez,' sez he. 'Sit down, ladies,' sez he, 'and pay me the money,' sez he. 'I had a great many paple to lave,' sez he. An' indade he had, ma'am. An' we paid the money agin, an' we wint down to the bottom o' the city. 'This is not the Washington Market, Mrs. Magovern,' sez I.—'It is not, Mrs. Haley,' sez she.—'We'll git out, Mrs. Magovern,' sez I.—'We will, Mrs. Haley,' sez she. Thin came the gintleman that first had the dure in his hand. 'What's the matther, ladies?' sez he.—'This isn't the Washington Market, sur,' sez I.—'It is not, ma'am,' sez he, 'but the city is a great place,' sez he, 'an' it's not aisy to go everywhere at wonst,' sez he; 'an' if yez will have patience,' sez he, 'ye'll git there,' sez he. 'Git in, ladies,' sez he, 'an' pay yer fares.' Wid all the houses there's in the city, an' all the sthrates there's in it, faith, it was no good at all to thry to foind our way alone; but thim wur false paple—they niver took us to the Washington Market at all; an' it was all the day we wint up to the top o' the city and down to the bottom o' the city, and spinding our money at it. An' sez I, 'Mrs. Magovern, it would be better for us if we wint home,' sez I.—'It would, Mrs. Haley,' sez she; an' we come down to the boat, an' it was two hours agin befoor the boat would go, an' thin we come home; an' it's toired we are, an' it's an' awful place, the city is."

Haley's statements could seldom be relied on, but his untruth fulness was never a matter of self-interest, but rather of amiability. He desired to tell you whatever you desired to know, and to tell it as you would like to hear it, even if facts were so perverse as to be contrary.

One day I wanted to do an errand in the village, and called for the horse and carriage. Haley brought them to the door. As I took the reins I remembered that it was noon and the horse's dinner-time: "Did the horse have his dinner, Haley?"

"I just gave it to him, ma'am; and an ilegint dinner he had."

"Why did you feed him just when I was about to drive him?"

"Oh, well, it's not much he got."

"He should have had nothing."

"Faith, me lady, I ownly showed it to him."

There were no more respectable people in The Lane than John Godfrey and his family. His pretty little wife with an anxious face tenderly watched over an ever-increasing family of daughters, till on one most providential occasion the expected girl turned out to be a boy, and I went with my sisters to congratulate the happy mother. "What will you name the little fellow, Mrs. Godfrey?" I asked, sympathetically.

The poor woman looked up with a smile, saying weakly, "John Pathrick, miss—John afther the father, an' Pathrick afther the saint."

The following year the same unexpected luck brought another boy, and again we young girls, being much at leisure, carried our congratulations: "What will be the name of this little boy, Mrs. Godfrey?"

"Pathrick John, miss—Pathrick afther the saint, an' John afther the father."

A confused sense of having heard that sentence before came over me. "Why, Mrs. Godfrey," I said, "was not that the name of your last child?"

"To be shure, miss. Why would I be trating one betther than the other?"

A member of this same family, upon receiving a blow with a stone in the eye, left her somewhat overcrowded paternal home for the quieter protection of her widowed aunt, Mrs. King, and one day my sister and myself knocked at Mrs. King's door to inquire about the state of the injured organ.

"Troth, miss, it's very bad," said Mrs. King.

"What do you do for it, Mrs. King?"

"Do?" said Mrs. King, suddenly applying the corner of her apron to her overflowing eyes—"Do?" she continued in a broken voice. "I've been crying these three days."

"But what do you do to make it better?"

Mrs. King took heart, folded her arms, and thus applied herself to the setting forth of her humane exertions: "In comes Mistress Magovern, an', 'Mrs. King,' sez she, 'put rar bafesteak to the choild's oye;' an' that minit, ma'am, the rar bafesteak wint to it. Thin comes Mrs. Haley. 'Is it rar bafesteak ye'd be putting to it, Mrs. King?' sez she. 'Biling clothes, Mrs. King,' sez she. That minit, ma'am, the rar bafesteak come afif an' the biling clothes wint to it. In comes Mrs. Quinlan. 'Will ye be destryin' the choild's oye intirely, Mrs. King?' sez she. 'Cowld ice, Mrs. King.' An' that minit, ma'am, the biling clothes come aff an' the cowld ice wint to it. Oh, I do be doin' iverything anybody do tell me."

It was a memorable sight to see the Gunning twins wandering down The Lane hand in hand when their maternal relative had gone out washing for the day and taken the door-key with her. "Thim lads is big enough to take care of thimsilves," she would remark, though "the lads" were not yet capable of coherent speech. No doubt they wandered into some neighbor's at meal-time and received a willingly-given potato or a drink of milk. They seemed happy enough, and their funny, ugly little faces were defaced by no tears. They grew in time old enough to explain their position to inquiring passers-by and to pick up and eat an amazing quantity of green apples. A lady passing one day stopped and remonstrated with one of them. "Barney," she said, "it will make you ill if you eat those green apples."—"I do be always atin' of them, ma'am," replied Barney, stolidly.

Perhaps it may have been the green apples, but from whatever cause Barney fell ill, and all that the doctor prescribed made him no better. "It's no matther, stir," said Mrs. Gunning one morning: "yer needn't come ag'in. I'll just go an' ask Mrs. –" (my mother).

The next morning the doctor, meeting my mother, laughingly remarked that it was very plain that they couldn't practise in the same district: he had just met Mrs. Gunning, who informed him that "what Mrs. – gave her the night befoor done the choild a power of good."

The day preceding our departure from the place my sister and I passed through The Lane, and received the most amiable farewells, accompanied with blessings, and even tears. The figure I best remember is that of Mrs. Regan, who, bursting out from her doorway, stood in our path, and, dissolving in tears, sobbed out, "Faith, I'm sorry yez be goin'. I don't know what I'll do at all widout yez;" and, seizing my sister's hand, gave her this unique recommendation: "Ye were always passing by mannerly—niver sassy nor impidint, nor nothing."