One day Mrs. Kline, the wife of the Superintendent of the Gospel
Mission, phoned me, “We have a man here so covered with vermin that I
cannot let him into the house, yet he seems to be an educated man. [This
was at the Industrial Department on Fourteenth Street, before we had our
new building.] What shall I do now?” “Call Donavan, Hall and Happy, and
take him to the woodshed and have a tub of warm water; let the men give
him a thorough bath, barber him and wrap him in blankets, till we can
get clothes for him.” That was done. We found Taylor an educated man, a
graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the editor of a paper in a
suburb of Philadelphia. He claimed that he had been “shanghaied,” that
is, drugged and carried on board an oyster boat as a common laborer. He
had gone to Baltimore to go on a drunk, hoping his friends would not
find him out, but his Nemesis was there waiting for him.
He had been kept six weeks on the oyster boat, had been forced to bunk
with negroes and common roustabouts. After he became sober, I fancy the
owners of the boat saw that they had captured the wrong man, and would
gladly have gotten rid of him. They did not dare approach land lest
their entire crew escape; at last he was put aboard a passing boat and
sent to Washington. He was over six feet high, of fine physique, about
thirty-two years of age. We did not find it easy to get clothing
suitable for such a person. The day came when he was able to attend the
services at the Mission. He kneeled at the altar, and we hoped he was
converted. We greatly wanted him to bring suit against the oyster men,
but that would have made his case public, and he did not desire that. He
readily secured a place on one of our city papers as the purveyor of
automobile news, but when pay day came he got drunk and fell down the
stairs and broke his arm. His system was in bad condition and he was
obliged to go to the free ward of Providence Hospital. We now wrote to
his family, and his mother came for him in a big touring car from
Philadelphia and took him home, but the exposure and dissipation had
done their perfect work, and he only lived a few months. He seemed, from
all accounts, a truly penitent man, but only at the judgment day shall
we know whether he entered into the rest prepared for the children of
God only.
Another experience in the winter of 1911 gave us a still lower opinion
of the oyster men of the lower Chesapeake Bay. Mr. Hall telephoned me,
one cold slippery day, “Do come down at once, the oyster men are in. Mr.
Kline is away, and the men are in bad condition.” I went at once. The
halls were full of them; many had only overalls, shirt and shoes without
stockings; they looked frozen. I ordered coffee and rolls at my expense
till I could call help. I feared if I opened the clothing room they
would raid it, so great were their needs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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