On this page
-
Text (1)
-
32 INFANT SEAMSTRESSES.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Into One Of Those Narrow, Gloomy Streets...
keeping of tlie cripple almost entirely . "What could slie do more ? ... But we have not done . On the bed lay two infants , both in the
but first there year was of their just life something , and both 1 which asleep told . One that was life ' s a health fine , stout y current boy ,
had received a taint , an indefinable something like what we see in a flower when autumn has breathed on the landscape . The other
child was a mere animated skeleton ; one would almost fancy that labored breath would be its last . " Unnatural mother ! " you
unnecessarilv say every . How easil . y She said has ! Well to find , but the she needful does not from leave mantle her -work child
generally ; but for the sake of her babe she does the fine shirts , as she can have them at homethough they do not pay nearly so well .
, common To-day she thing has 1 for taken the them hands to to the have warehouse to wait for , and hours as it before is no they
un-Beside can be s attended these annoyances to , she may she is not suffering be home 1 from yet a for stony some cancer time , .
yet refuses to be separated from her child for treatment . Such is this unnatural mother .
A day or two after we saw this babe laid on a tea-tray covered with shirting * clothand in its hands were two or _threex primroses .
With what a steady , hand did the mother remove the covering- from that little corpse . Was she apathetic ? No , there was a light in .
her eye which told of something- else than apathy ; but _Vhe did not . A seamstress weep ! One who had a dozen " fine " in
mortified hand weep , weep belle ! and No , the tears indi are gnant for m childhood amma , for and the old bereave age , for d and the
sorrowing' if they can afford them , not for the wrestling , -writhing children of oppression . Ohnotears are not for these .
, , What a feeling * of sadness did we experience from the company of these unhappy creatures in one short hour . "Wliat must it be to
month sit with after them month hour ? after It _woiil hour d seem , day almost after impossible day , week to after endur week e the , / _S
ceaseless attrition , but it must never be forgotten that the fearful struggle from day to day is not for competence , not for comfort , but
for life ! During the time we stayed , we never saw one smile , though ever
so faint , ripple over those young faces ; not a twinkle of mirth or mischief . The old woman was a patient , kindly soul ; patient as
anybody that was continually goaded by poverty could be expected to be . We thought she must have had a large stock originally , to
have lasted through a life in which such constant and heavy demands had been made iipon itand to have lasted so long . *
Perhaps the extremes of desolation , are to be found in childhood and old . We say desolation ; in middle life a wilder anguish
jnay wring age the hearfc , an anguish which neither age nor childhood can know in consequence of the obtuseness of the reflective faculty .
But one chief attribute of desolation is helplessness . A little child
who was sitting on a stone step one bitter night , struck the writer
32 Infant Seamstresses.
32 _INFANT _SEAMSTRESSES .
-
-
Citation
-
English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Sept. 1, 1859, page 32, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01091859/page/32/
-