A POOR PARSON'S TALE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 580, 30 March 1870, Page 3

A POOR PARSON'S TALE.

(From " T7iis Way Out," in Beeton's Annual.) Some years ago— in a time of great destitution, when hundreds of the labouring classes were reduced to the most abject dis tress through a sudden failure in a staple manufacture— the dwellings of the poor be came frightfully crowded. As many as forty and fifty human beings huddled together in a single house— if house it could indeed be called— and ate, drank, slept, washed, and cooked— the sick and the well, young and old, married and single, all crowded together as thick as vermin. It was a bad sign often when a single family did have a single room. There is an instinct in birds and beasts which leads them to go away from their kind to suffer and to die. And too often the single room told of worse straits and deeper destitution than could have been borne in a crowd. There was the workhouse, of course; and many of the sufferers would have been received there - great as was the demand for accommodation and relief. But as a rule a working man won't go into the house— that last degradation he cannot bear, and that was the test. At the time of this distress, one afternoon, I was visiting a little parishioner of mme — a mere child of twelve years old — who, with her younger sister, makes match boxes at twopence-halfpenny per gross, and finds glue and thin paper for the insides too; and earns, Lizzie Dot'rell and her sister together, nearly or quite as much as her feeble mother can make at sewing. Between them, the three pay the ninepence a week rent of their own little room, and just keep the wolf from coming in — only just. Whilst there I heard a noise in the street, and going out to see the cause, some one said : "Oh, do go up into that house, sir; there's a man there beating his wife shameful." I went where I was directed —up a broken flight of greasy stairs, winding round a filthy black passage, up another flight of broken stairs, and past many haggard faces of men and women. Outside a broken door I paused, uncertain if it were the right one. I heard a moan, that sounded like a woman's. Then a man spoke in a weak voice, but passionate, and broken into pauses by sickness or weakness. "I wish, my God, I had killed you, Jane ! " " And I, Tom — and I would not have cried nor groaned if you had only kissed me first, and told me you meant it, and would forgive me." " I would — have done it," he gasped out, " but I — l haven't got— the strength." I opened the door and walked in. " What do you want ?" the man asked, in a husky whisper. He was lying on the bare floor, very faint, and had raised himself up on his elbow. He had a face like a skeleton, in which hunger and fever were contending for a prey — for the wolf had come in, and was looking out of his eyes. There was not a scrap of furniture in the room — neither bed nor bedstead, chair nor table; only a broken teapot with a little water in it beside the man. In another part of the room, against the empty firegrate, lay his wife, also on the floor, lying on her back, and pale frora the loss of the blood that flowed from her head. Near her was a piece of iron rod that seemed once to have served for a poker, and now for a weapon. "I don't know," I said, for I was taken abacV; " I wish only to render help, if I can." "Go to her," he said. I went and examined the blows on the poor woman's head. They were not serious, although bleeding profusely — scalp wounds and bruises only. I poured some of the water from the teapot on my handkerchief, bathed them and bandaged them with it. There was the wolf in her eyes too — till the tears came. Then it left. "He didn't mean to do it, sir," the woman was crying, while I tied up the wounds. "He is the kindest of husbands; but we've been in trouble lately. There was no work. We've parted with the last of the things a fortnight ago. I couldn't bear to see him die for want before my eyes. And so I sent my daughter —No, sir — I can't tell you — but we were all two days without food. It wasn't for myself, sir — I would sooner have died. But I couldn't bear to see him suffer; and as for what he did far me, I deserve it all." I had a little pocket communion-service with me ; there was wine in it; I poured it out — no sacrilege — and gave to her. She would not touch it until her husband had first drank a great part of it. Then, seeing him a trifle revived by the wine, I sat by him on the floor, having given a trifle to his wife to buy bread, and directed her to send for a doctor; when she was gone, I said — "My poor fellow, open your heart to me — tell me what bitter strait brought you to regret that you hadn't strength left to become a murderer ; was it only famine ? " " No." He was very weak — past food or medical help — all that was too late for him now. This murderous attack on his wife had been the last mad effort of fever and delirium — the flickering up of the dying flame before it expires. " What then ? tell me, that I may know how to help you." I drew his terrible story from bim in short questionings and answers as he could bear it. He withheld the portions relative to his own great privations; these I afterwards gathered from his wife. He had b en out of work ten months, along with many hundred others, and there was no work in his trade obtainable anywhere. He gave up his little house first. That was a great pain. His wife was above his own station, and had taken such a pride in it, and made even out of his poor, things a house fit for a gentleman, he said. The little savings from his weekly wages soon went— and when he moved into two zooms the furniture began to go. They remained in two rooms till it was all gone for food but the mattress. Then they moved here, and nothing was left but a few garments to pawn. All this time he sought work, tried to get only an hour's employ as a porter, messenger — anything as long as it was work; but the lower down the scale, the fiercer men fight for. their ownhunger makes them so keen. Hundreds were struggling for the like employ. The strong}

and the clamorous succeeded, while the heart-broken were trampled down in the crowd. Now and then he did get a penny or twopence in the day for holding a horse or minding a cab. And in taking this home to his wife and his daughter Nelly, he always made them believe he had spent part of what he earned on food for himself, and would seldom touch their bread. Then he felt the end was coming. He could no more go out. And there was ho food, and no more clothes left to pawn to obtain any. His only shirt had long gone, aud his ■wife and child were so destitute as only to have rags enough between them to cover decently the one who went out to fetch anything. All that morning he had been lying in a kind of stupor, which he had thought was the end. But, awaking, he missed his daughter, and asked for her. His wife prevaricated, then burst out into tears, then owned what she had done — how she had sent her out on the streets as a last resourse to get money to buy bread to save her father's life, money not to be begged nor stolen. " Oh! not that 1 " the man had groaned in bitter agony, " not that, mother 1 better we all died than that. Oh, God, how could you, the mother that bare her, and not have killed her rather 1" Then in a wild frenzy of horror aud anger, thinking his strength had returned to him, he had leaped up and fallen on his wife with the piece of iron, thiuking it better they all had died than that; but found himself too weak. " No, sir," he said to me, " don't tell me about God, or His book; only fetch me my child, my little Nelly— it may not be too late — that I may see her before I die, and know that it is not too late." He was right: I left j him, kneeling at his wife's side, although it was a last effort, got medical advice, and a I trifle of food, and promising to return, set off on my errand. I got a woman from the house to accompany me to identify the girl, and found a policeman to direct us in our inquiries. We visited every house in the neighbourhood, and every den where there was a chance of a poor ragged girl being found; but without success. We then took each street and alley within a circuit of three miles, and wandered about till evening waned into night, till night waxed to midnight, and the pale moon glared out in a sickly halo through quickly drifting, gusty clouds, and stars gleamed far off in the depth behind the clouds. Farther yet we traversed, and the night grew on, till passing along a deserted street, we came to a great and fine building dedicated to Foreign Missions, a glorious monument of the benevolent interest we take in the welfare of the heathen who dwell where " Afric's sunny fountains run down her golden sands." There, crouched on the steps, numbed with the cold, and asleep from sheer exhaustion, was the poor English child we sought. Thank God, it was not too late. The wolf in the girl's face, her wan and frightened looks, and the poor rags that clad her, were her surest protection from evil. We fed her first, there in the street, for I had bought a little bread before the shops closed, and put in my pocket a small flask of brandy. She ate ravenously, tearing her food like prey, and eyeing it with the eagerness of a wild beast— yet not her, gentle thing, it was the wolf . And when she had taken as much as we deemed prudent to allow her, we brought her home in the middle of the night. If ever I saw devout thankfulness and supreme gratitude to the Father in heaven depicted on any human being's face, I saw it in that poor man's as he lay dying with his head resting on Nelly's lap, the only pillow he had, or wished for. " I thought," he said, "my last sin— beating her— but I didn't know what I did, and He knows what I've suffered— kiss me again, Jane — would never be forgiven me. Then, after you were gone, it came into my mind if I could only see my little Nelly safe before I went, I should take it for a sign. God bless you, sir." "The Lord is very pitiful, aud of tender mercy," I said "Will He see they don't die of want ?" he asked, with a great and earnest effort. "I am sure He will," I replied ; " and I will be His servant to do His will." He closed his eyes, and murmurred, as it were in a sleep—" Very pitiful, and of tender mercy!" And when he opened them again in spirit, it was where they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, and where God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. The night was past, and it was daybreak, and the sun shone in upon the room, as I left them alone with their dead. I buried him. And they did not want. My wealthy parishioners are always ready to give money to a thrilling case of aggravated distress, but sadly lax to prevent the occurrence of such cases by lack of personal knowledge of the poor. Monetary help in plenty poured in from all sources in answer to newspaper (appeals. _ "Relief" is the honester word; | for it relieves the consciences of the givers |by deluding them that thereby they escape their duty to their kind. The mother never thoroughly recovered that time of suffering; but, in spite of care and sympathy, faded out of life within three months of her husband's death. Then arose the question what to do with Nelly, a gentle, good-looking girl of sixteen. I tried successively to get her admitted to orphan schools, and various industrial and benevolent homes, honestly stating her history as I have told it. But the doors of these excellent institutions were all shut against her. In two cases only was the objection urged tbat she was pass the age for admission. All the rest stated that, after her exposure that night in the streets for the purpose admitted, she could not be received into the home, for fear of corrupting the inmates, and that the only proper asylum for her was a Magdalen institute or penitentiary. As the poor child had done nothing to qualify her to associate with the dwellers in those asylums, I did not choose she should enter one of them, well knowing how unsuited would be the teaching and discipline experienced there to any but minds " qualified " to listen to dissertation on female temptation, illustrated by prominent examples. So, with some trouble, I got Nelly received in a country village school, where she made her-

self useful, and received an education at the same time.

Many years ago, friends — many years ago. And Nelly grew up to be a gentle, good, Christian woman ; as much a lady in heart and gentleness as any in the land. And when the poor parson needed a help-meet for him in word and deed, to help him bind together in common chord of sympathy the very rich and the very poor, between whom the great gulf fiXed is grown so wide as only just to be spanned 7 by kind words now; and when that thread once breaks, fire and sword will leap across it instead— when, I say, the poor parson needed such a gentle help, he asked Nelly to be his wife. And all the parish knows that the parson's wife is Nelly, that was the outcast, and are glad; for she is the tenderer to the Btrayed, and the fallen, and them that are out of the way for it. Aye, my darling ! and all the world is welcome to know it too.