The Project Gutenberg EBook of Saint Patrick, by Heman White Chaplin

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Saint Patrick
1887

Author: Heman White Chaplin

Release Date: October 12, 2007 [EBook #23002]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAINT PATRICK ***

Produced by David Widger

SAINT PATRICK

By Heman White Chaplin

1887

I.

One of the places which they point out on Ship Street is the Italian
fruit-shop on the corner of Perry Court, before the door of which, six
years ago, Guiseppe Cavagnaro, bursting suddenly forth in pursuit of
Martin Lavezzo, stabbed him in the back, upon the sidewalk. "All two"
of them were to blame, so the witnesses said; but Cavagnaro went to
prison for fifteen years. That was the same length of time, as it
happened, that the feud had lasted.

Nearly opposite is Sarah Ward's New Albion dance-hall. It opens directly
from the street There is an orchestra of three pieces, one of which
plays in tune. That calm and collected woman whom you may see rocking in
the window, or sitting behind the bar, sewing or knitting, is not a city
missionary, come to instruct the women about her; it is Sarah Ward,
the proprietress. She knows the Bible from end to end. She was a
Sunday-school teacher once; she had a class of girls; she spoke in
prayer-meetings; she had a framed Scripture motto in her chamber, and
she took the Teachers' Lesson Quarterly; she visited the sick; she
prayed in secret for her scholars' conversion. How she came to change
her views of life nobody knows,--that is to say, not everybody knows.
And still she is honest. It is her pride that sailors are not drugged
and robbed in the New Albion.

A few doors below, and on the same side of the street, is the dance-hall
that was Bose King's-. It is here that pleasure takes on its most sordid
aspect. If you wish to see how low a white woman can fall, how coarse
and offensive a negro man can be, you will come here. There is an
inscription on the bar, in conspicuous letters,--"Welcome Home."

By day it is comparatively still in Ship Street. Women with soulless
faces loll stolidly in the open ground-floor windows. There are few
cu