The Arena, Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 — John Shaqi
The Arena, Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891Various
General
The Arena, Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891
Various
American literature -- Periodicals
[2] NOTE ON PICTURE OF INVALID IN CHAIR. The picture given in
this issue of this apartment represents the poor invalid
placed by some friends on a chair while his bed could be
made. Our artist preferred to take it this way, knowing
that it would bring out the strong face better than if
taken on his pallet on the floor, where for two years he
has lain. Through The Arena Relief Fund, we have been
enabled to greatly relieve the hard lot of this as well as
many other families of unfortunates. Now the invalid is
provided with a comfortable bedstead, with a deep, soft
mattress, and furnished with many other things which
contribute to life's comfort. When the bed, mattress, and
other articles were being brought into this apartment, the
tears of gratitude and joy flowed almost in rivers from the
eyes of the patient wife, who felt that even in their
obscure den some one in the great world yet cared for them.
[Illustration: CONSTANCE AND MAGGIE (SEE NOTE).]
The next place we visited was in the attic of a tenement building even
more wretched than the one just described. The general aspects of these
houses, however, are all much the same, the chief difference being in
degrees of filth and squalor present. Here in an attic lives a poor
widow with three children, a little boy and two little girls, Constance
and Maggie.[3] They live by making pants at twelve cents a pair. Since
the youngest child was two and a half years old she has been daily
engaged in overcasting the long seams of the garments made by her
mother. When we first called she had just passed her fourth birthday,
and now overcasts from three to four pairs of pants every day. There
seated on a little stool she sat, her fingers moving as rapidly and in
as unerring manner as an old experienced needlewoman. These three
children are fine looking, as are most of the little Portuguese I
visited. Their large heads and brilliant eyes seem to indicate capacity
to enjoy in an unusual degree the matchless delight springing from
intellectual and spiritual development. Yet the wretched walls of their
little apartment practically mark the limit of their world; the needle
their inseparable companion; their moral and mental natures hopelessly
dwarfed; a world of wonderful possibilities denied them by an inexorable
fate over which they have no control and for which they are in no way
responsible. We often hear it said that these children of the slums are
perfectly happy; that not knowing what they miss life is as enjoyable to
them as the young in more favorable quarters. I am satisfied, however,
that this is true only in a limited sense. The little children I have
just described are already practically machines; day by day they engage
in the same work with much the monotony of an automatic instrument
propelled by a blind force. When given oranges and cakes, a momentary
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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