Toronto by Gaslight: The Night Hawks of a Great City: As Seen by the Reporters of "The Toronto News"Toronto News
History
Toronto by Gaslight: The Night Hawks of a Great City: As Seen by the Reporters of "The Toronto News"
Toronto News
Toronto (Ont.) -- Description and travel
It seems that when the rain is falling, when the air is chill, when
the darkness is deepest and when the great station looks most gloomy
and dreary, the emigrant train arrives. As the train draws in and
slowly passes me to its allotted space the faces that I see through
the dirty windows are tired and worn and the eyes are hollow and sad.
I went through an emigrant train one night and I will never forget the
experience. The emigrants were chiefly Irish, English and Swedes. Some
of them stayed here in Toronto but the majority were bound for points
farther west. As I opened the door of the first car a blast of hot, foul
air smote me in the face and almost turned me sick, and yet the people
whom I saw before me seemed to mind it but little. They were used to
it and it was a great improvement on the poisonous atmosphere of the
steerage. The car was closely packed, every seat had more than its quota.
It was impossible to see to the far end of the car on account of a steam
which fermented the place and made the faces of people in the middle of
the car look obscure and distorted. The emigrants were in every attitude
and conceivable posture; some were lying prone on the floor, others were
huddled in the seats, while others, with arms entwined, were resting
their heads on each others’ shoulders. One whole family, man and wife and
six children, were squeezed into two seats in the most amazing manner.
The parents formed a sort of under strata on which the little children
were piled promiscuously. They were all asleep,
THEIR ARMS ENTWINED,
their cheeks touching, and their spirits winging through dreamland
back to the good land of Sweden far away. Utterly unconscious of their
surroundings or of the great city into which they had entered, ignorant
of the fact that they had halted at one of the chief stopping places on
their journey, they slept on, and as I watched them and saw their lips
move and the unintelligible words drop forth, I knew that they spoke of
home. One poor man with bowed head was weeping quietly, and I asked him
what ailed him.
“Oh, sir, she died in Monthrehal.”
“Who died in Montreal?”
“Me wife, sor, the voyidge killed her sor; oh, wirra, wirra, why did I
bring her away.”
Three little children were clinging to his knees and looking up at me
with wondering eyes. The man glanced up through his tears, which he
struck from his eyes with his shut fists.
“Sure I’m better off than that poor crathur yonder—go an’ shpake to her,
sor.”
The woman he pointed out was sitting alone in her seat. She was young and
good looking, but her face was drawn and pinched with some sudden and
bitter woe. Her baby was wrapped in a dark shawl, lying very still, and
she rocked it gently in her arms, and talked to it in cooing voice.
“Is your baby sick?”
“No sir.”
“It is sleeping then?”
“Yes sir, my baby is sleeping.”
A little girl who was on her knees beside the woman lifted the shawl from
the sleeper’s face. The baby was dead! The mother looked up with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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