The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 29, 1896, Page 17

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, MARCH 29, 1876. 17 HIS is one story. It s told by Sergeant Car- son. She 18 sitting One with her f back to : thewallin A8 t e front room up a Begt flia airs at the Wom | an’s Shelter in Stevenson of | stree Something of the the { emell of Stevenson street and Kind 5 in ill oaths and obscen- / ! f children at play keep Havo | e w 'bh the telling and Ever | seem to become a part of it. Hi S t. ard. § eant Carson is areason- _,»:,lm,,. sbly voung woman. She is Shandy. married, but asto her husband shesays, “We are two.”” That is her affair and no [fi'i ;»f thestory. She becameconverted at San .Jose not so very long ago and soon after ¢ ° up and applied for a place in the ial wing” of the Salvation Army. At the opening of the Shelter last January she was appointed to take charge. When she looks at you, and before she has spoken, you know that she has had experience. Her expression is not sad, for she has not only her n of “blood and fire,” but a philos that is much ler. She will not fail to see what ever of grim humor | there may be in all the familiar horror of | the days and hts at the Shelter. 2 clean woman came here’— this little b “Her under- sxirts were not much soiled, her nails were cared for. I selected the best bed for her nk of asking her to take a | h the others I insist on about telling the sisters of what pened. They were as much But the next morning | [ We went into the new- | ich she had already put 3 s’ snuggled up ne of the creases of the seemed a pity to dis- so comfortab! sheet that i b them. She keeps wit PuUTPO: they may a “regis of her guests nt that may serve the ground against which like this Sober and much dis- Clothes to; her head and a large con- Says her husband to speak 1 town. Mrs. Carson is not pretty. large and is set out of ¢ eyes do not fill with tears the world nor do the ous merit jest. They are large of knowledge. An in the story as break- corn ining it by saying, ‘I w I fooled Judge Camup- | e sergeant quotes herself | ing, “Well, now ot to the J q he was on the Barbary Coastand I was ier attached to the corps at the Sal- vation Dive on Kearny street. I met her often on tre street, and, ah! she was a disreputable Kate—fiithy in her person and her lang Y know we have regular visitors to the jails and prisons. I was assigned to branch Connty Jail, and there | met Kate on a_better footing than 1 ever had before. She was sober, and could understand what I said. I sat with and telked to her. I said:‘Kate, bear thisin mind. Iam your friend. There is no need of your spending any more years of vour life’in this place. this time come to me. I am your friend.’ e said she would, but I was sure she wouldn’t. There was that little incredu- as Iwantto help lous glimmer in toe eye that speaks of unbel f. 1did not leave her at that, but Not the s but ime I visited the prison I talked to ese army people, have an exemplifica- or she seemed at least well pleased at of all their methods in their manner | ention. Her time expired and she speech. It is so much the practical, | Went back to Barbary Coast. ~Where 1t-0f-doors way of saying things that, taken in connection with the business of saving souls, it passeth all understanding. Understand the sergeant does not get in fact she on r considerable pe t of her assistant, and v fifteen min ck on the oken and suasion on the p: there wa. tel that was fill ar approaches to this sto siie tells it she sits hair, her knees apa Appea ed over on cloth, stiff- drooping awkwardly and onelarge from under her dress is | its side. She TS a imed hat, the rim with time and t not sitting Her dress isof of velvet trimn we neat and sight the red of the ar: in_the calico- voluble assistant her end of the t forward, eager witk As I shall not mysel ant once she gets allow the assistant—a woman—to do so. She had been talking about the women who s the shelter, how some of them came rolling in at all hours, how bathing was a necessary incident to thelr recep- tion and before they were given a clean nightdress and a ciean bed, how they fought against it gener: and how one of the after having 1 persuaded, nst long and bitter protest, had passed e ordeal, and had finally reached com- fort between the white ubper and nether sheets, clad in a clean night rcke, was overcome in the silence of the nights’ brooding upon the insult, and, leaving the bed, rushed into the street crying for help and heaping curses upon the place. The policeman that responded she begged to go in and get her clothes, as she would bave no more of it. -Tail, jail, jail, jail, jail, jail, jail. That is what's the matter with the women who come here. They have been sent to jail so much. They cannot be made to understand that there is some one who really cares for them. They understand the jails. The police tney look upon as_a uniformed or- ion to get rid of them. Itis their eculation—how many days they will get next time. They come outof the jail | and go into kiding until perhaps about the third day when thev are drunk enough to | be bold or careless. Then they go up again. The police courts deem it their business to free the cleaner public from contact with these people; these people know it, and that is all they know of society—that it is organized to_get rid of them. Therefore they find it difficult to associate any other relationship to them | and fight when | they encounter a rule which we require | them to observe. The police themselves smile at our efforts in the case of the wrecks familiar to them. They say, ‘Oh, | you mean well, but we know this we have been passing her along for that’ sits at the nterestedly t mi(-r".}v\lnn. interfere with the | tarted, I shall not | very kindly old | with our and they fret years. ‘But out of this ruck once in a while a an Lifts up her nhead. There has fil- | through ber brain a realization of | eaning of our care of her. It is not | - after tnat until she is doing good in | the world. | “There was the case”’—now this is the | story—“of Old Kate. I will call her Old | Kate. I met her just aiter I came to town | and frequently. would she go? old habits and as tions are strong upon them. Set down in the streets by the prison van, they know they are marked. There is the prison look about them, and they turn, with hardened, hopeless faces, back to their haunts and into hiding until, as 1 said, emboldened by whisky, to take their chances with the police again. “Kate had forgotten ail about me, I am sure, until this People criticize our methods. Well, never mind that. We were holding our services on the street, corner of Pine and Kearny, a week or so after that, and were about to take up our march to the meeting hall down in the basement, you know, called the Dive. The bass drum had been struck 10 give us the step, when the captain, as he tells me, was impelled as though some one had whispered fo him, to ask me to i He stopped the march and 1 sang ‘I Know That My Redeemer What can they do? Their oc; that moment old Kate stag- Waen you get | period returned to her. | {had got seated and services were about | course, they gave me the money instantly. | to begin when there was a sound of a | That night I went to a lodging-house with | heavy fall at the door. I | somebody was throwin, bricks, ran out. There lay Ol foot of the stone steps insensible. thought | Katé. 1 washed her and fixes and | next morning her amazement grew upon Kate at the | her as she awoke and found me with and She | still interested in her. had stageered along after the flag and drum, but was unabie to get down the steps. and carried it down into the room. 1took the limp body in my arms | ‘What a sight it was! It was raining in the street and her clothes were wet and bedraggled. | Her hair haa not been combed since she left the prison and there was an ugly cut distressing way. her face. Presently talked to her reassuringly. the bleeding and the on her forehead that was bleeding in & 1 found a_ basin and | | water and held ber over it while I bathed he came to and I The cut and dirt and chill | and sickness that she must have felt were to Kate. entirely ordinary other, the touch of kindness, that to other, | better conditioned people would have | come as a matter of course in her condi- at | | me curiously now and then as I taiked | and bathed her forehead, and after a bit tion, that caught Kate. She looked u; It was the | | she threw back her hair from her face and said: | “I believe you care for me.’ | <Of course I do,’ I said. | “"Do you really care what becomes o e * ‘Certainly I do.” of me? | do with me? “Ah! there was the rub. This shelter | “‘But_what could become of the likes What could I do—what could you had not been more than thought of at that | time. | on your feet—make a woman of you, if will let me.’ “She-did not talk any more, but re- | mained entirely docile as though willing | But I said: ‘I am going to put you you | to at least wait and see how the miracle might be worked. gave her a comfortable place on I bound up her head, the | benches and then went up to the street i into the air to think. t| ber up. The 1‘ “I had a great deal to do that day, but I v 350990000000, Bap, om, s S gered along. In another half bour she would have been in the patrol wagon. She heard ‘he voice of the woman singing. It was the woman who had said to_her, ‘I am your friend,’ and whom she had prom- ised to come to see when she got out, and which promise she bad not kept—and here she was getting ready to go back to jail. She knew, she was. i “‘Swaying about on the outskirts of the crowd, I did not notice her. We took up our march and trailed down into the Dive ] with a considerable following. The crowd “I was new to this business. I had never asked for money from anybody at that time. The door of a saloon across the street was open and there was quite a | crowd there spending freely the money that I needed. I went in among them and said : “ ‘Boys, I am in trouble.’ “ ‘What's the matter now ?'they asked. “When I had told them I said: ‘I want to save this woman. I want enough money to pay for a room for her for a week until she is sober and I can find a place for her.,’ Of must not lose sight of Kate, so I took her with me. She was full of anxieties and I knew that she would have given the re- demption I promised for one drink of liguor. But I talked to her and tried to divert her thoughts until along in the afternooon, when I saw her nerves were giving way. I took her into a drugstore and got a dose of something for her. Later she said she wanted to get some- thing from the room she had been stop-. ping at, and I said, ‘Very weli, Kate, I will wait here at the foot of the stairs.” “‘Ah! you are going to trust me alone, then,’ she said. “‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Haven't you promised you will come with me?’ “(Yes, ard I would rather die than de- ceive you.’ she said. “That is the end of the story. Old Kate is now an honest, sober woman.” But Sergeant Carson went right along. “The aoors here are open all the time, but we have not room for the entire popu- lace and we have to discriminate some times. Our aim is to afford a shelter to those seeking shelter—who may at the time they turn to us be in need of a friend —and not to set up a place where the utterly indifferent drunk may come to | sober up, get a meal and return at nighc to their haunts. Our charge is 10 cents for a clean bed, with nightdress, bath and breakfast. But to most who come here the bath is a horror against which the | comfort of all the rest will scarcely balance. “We have to be very careful with their clothes and all' that, as we have no fumi- gating facilities as they have at the men’s shelter. We also require them to do a little work about the piace before they leave in the morning—clean up their own room for instance. Thatdone and breakfast eaten they drift away. Just then a little black-eyed merry- faced two-vyear-old on hands and knees crawled down the hall. The sergeant stopped ulking to watch its.progress. As it came over the threshold it stopped to suryey the situation, and then went in- dustriously toward the sergeant, sat down ;n;!d tendered to her the piece of cracker it elc. The sergeant leaned forward, elbows ugmn her knees and looked at the little thing. “[t is & girl,” she said, and paused long enough to allow that statement to stand distinctly by itself. The “To think of the hard knocks that lie in wait for this wee thing.”” The baby made another smiling tender of the bit of cracker, and the sergeant picked the child up and held it on her knees contemplatively and said, somewhat to herself, “Baby, if you were very sick I would not pray for you to get well.” Then she laughed quite merrily, touched the baby’s dimples and set it down again. “Whose is it? It's the child of a rescue girl. The rescue girl is upstairs. You see this house has several functions. There is the sheiter downstairs. There all appli- cants come. The rescue girls are sent up to the top floor, where they may be by themselves. We charge them nothing. We are only too glad to have them come here. Then the second floor is devoted to the care of girls who come to the City in search of work and want a cheap and safe lodging-house. That girl who passed through here just now is such a one. “The rescue department is a sort of pro- bationary precaution—preliminary to their going to the Rescue Home at Beulah. Oftentimes great harm has come from sending girls there who were really not sincere in their wish to reform. Return- ing to their former life, they have led away those who otherwise would have stood firm. They profess a desire to re- form for their own ends, some of them, and the ends are sometimes very evil. They have been known to go to Beulah, gain ar entrance in the regular way, for the purpose alone of inducing the girls there to return to their old life. Lieuteu- ant —— had a case, two cases, of such imposition. She found them in Portland; two pretty young girls who gave every sign of repentance, and their rescue was reported about as something calculated to place two very bright diamonds in Lieu- tenant —’s crown.” And here the faint glimmer of a smile came out of the brown depths of Sergeant Carson's steady eyes and even touched her lips. *“The girls wanted to be removed from temptation—to get away from their asso- ciations for a time and be surrounded by better influences. That meant Beulah, for we have no other place for these girls on the coast. Transportation was secured for them, and in company of the lieutenant herself they came down and were placed in the home. Three da{ls they ate, drank and slept comfortably there, and then, in company with two other girls whom they had influenced, they took up lodgings on the lower end of Ellis street, I think it was. Their only purpose in seeking our aid was to get from Portland—where they. had gone broke—to San Francisco. But it was the loss of the other two, who really intended to get away from that life, that hurt us. “To prevent that sort of thing we have set apart the rooms upstairs for the early steps of those returning. By the way, I hear a deal about the great work tbat_has | been accomplished in the closing of Mor- ton street. What has become of the girls? “The door here is always open for these and for any woman seeking friendly shelter,” continued the sergeant, “and while advantage is taken of 1t to a great extent by the jail-hardened class I have describea, it has already served the pur- pose of the rope to the drowning man—in this case drowning woman—many times | in the brief months of its existence. “It is getting dark. I must light the lamps.” This story 18 by Captain Wagner, who helped at the dedication, four years ago, of the Rescue Home at Beulah And nndd who, byhomersll from P headquarters, has only now Still ifgrewelled,” as they say in ome the army, and is on her way Some to New York to report for Hope what duty they may see fit R to give her. She begins more Abolishes 3ifiii51v i “anything, than | Despair. did Sergeant Carson, but she | — Emerson. Das & very nice sense as to the propriety, or impropriety, of talking about the people in her care, even without the names. That is a handicap. However— She is sitting in Mrs. Ensign McFee's rooms on Market street mending a rent in an apron, preparatory to taking the train the next day: ‘‘When Captain Wise died I took charge. There are seventeen girls in the home now. In the four years we have cared for 149 who saw their error and have striven to escape from it.” “How many out of the number have really done so?” % Captain Wagner kept to her dewing. There was a slight chanee of expression, but it was not of sadness. These Salva- tion Army people have such an absurd faith. They will see their whole fabric fall to pieces, and at once begin twistin, the hair to the back of their heads 1n har knots so that it will not be in the way and industriously begin to build it up again. “That is scarcely a fair question,” she said. *“At least it is hard to answer. There is a woman now in the home who, since she came under our care, has turned back and fallen and turned back and fallen again. And yet, having again turned back I believe that her feetare firmly placed and that she will go steadily for- | ward. | “8o you see you can’t tell what willcome | to all those girls at last. Some of them are safe—quite a number of them I think. I carry letters East with me to the_friends of a girl—a woman rather—whom I’m sure you would have had doubts about a year ago, but I certainly have none now, although she fell away from us oace and laughed at our efforts to recall her. We found her in the first instance at the Re- ceiving Hospital. “There had been a question whether they | | should drive the wagon to the Morgue or | out to the Hall. In fact I believe they did | take it to the Morgue. | ‘“And it was largely the fault of her | parents,” she said. “Oh, the responsibiiity | that mothers have. I want to get her a position as companion to some wealthy | person, for she is not fit for work like some of the others. Oh, yes, she reaas | beautifully and plays like a/ cultivated wo- man. And yetat 14 she had given her parents so much auxiety that they sent her out here. Think of ‘that as a remedy. Her parents live in Philadelphia. They | wanted to get her away from the influence | of some man and there were willing rela- tives here. “She is not a child now, of course— but is still young. When they brought her to at the hospital we took her to the home and she seemed quite con- tented for awhile. But as her health re- turned she became restless and fitful. She told me something of her story, but it was the common one in her case. ' Absolute willfulness, I gathered, was the chief cause. She had no notion of restraint. A sug- gestion of it on the part of the relatives to whom she came threw her into transports of passion. Then there came a man and he was thoroughly bad. She used to sing a song that somehow seemed peculiarly applicable. She must have felt the song, for I have seldom heard anything that touched me 80 as hersinging of it—we have our piano, you know, and she played the a;ggmpammenz. I recall only one verse of it: Like a young bird just left by its mother, Its earliest pinions to try, Round the nest will still lingering hover, Till its trembling wings can fly. “I have seen all the girls go to bed erying after hearing that song. But, recovered by our treatment from the sudden despond- ency that carried her body to the door of the Morgue she became the most cheerful of all our girls. I trembled a little at the sign. She had a way, too, of looking out of the western window that I did not like. “‘One day a man in a buggy—drunk and swearing—drove down the road past the home. Just in front of the cate his horse became fractious and the man more and more profane. He struck the horse and it x:ume a lunge sideways and the man fell out. “1 ran into' the road as a passer-by caught the horse. With a crushed hat and torn clothes, and bleeding from a cut on the face, the driver climbed back into the buggy, took the reins, struck the horse and drove wildly away. “The girl I am telling you of saw the in- cident from her window. The next morn- ing her room was vacant and not even a line told us where she had gone or said good-by. For two years I did not see or hear of her. Butone rainy night one of our lieutenants who knew her was passing along a street of the Barbary Coast and was attracted by the sound of a woman’s voice in one of the cellar dancmg halls, She was singing that song, * young bird just leit by its mother, its ear- liest pinions to try}’ “The lieutenant went down and spoke to her, but with no sign _of pleasure at the meeting the girl laughed and said, ‘Don’t mind me. ' I wasnot cut out to be good.’ “The man who had fallen out of the buggy at our gate came up, put_his hand on the lieutenant’s arm, Jaughed coarsely in ber face and pointed to the steps that led upinto the street. “Now that was a case that you might have thought was hopeless. In the first instance she had not come to us volun- tarily and had voluntarily run away. But when, a couple of months ago, sick and penniless, she found herself again de- serted it was not of the bay or of morphine that she thonght, but of Beulah. You cannot say in figures the proportion of the backsliders—at the last I mean. Iknow how the memary of a kindness will cling to these women. I take with me letters to this girl’s people in the East telling of her complete repentance and how she 1s over- come with homesickness and is willing to be anything to them if they will only say to her, ‘Come.’ " This is still another story. Itis by Cap- tain John Wood in charge of the Food and Shelter depot, known as the Lifeboat, down on Oregon At street, near the water front. There a man in hard luck can ~ L@st find a bath (a square, tin g tauk), a nightshirt (clean, but made’ out of flour sacks),a Have sleeping cot, with plenty of It covering, and a big tin of cof- - fee and crackers in the morn- This ing, all for a nickel. Every /i night this place is filled. The s decently disposed are givena “fhe place upstairs. The drunks and disorderlies are kept in Other separate quarters —in what Slary.” is known as the ‘‘tin room” on the first floor. It was formerly a ware- house. The walls inside are covered with sheet- iron to keep out the rats. There is an im- mense amount of work about this big es- tablishment that is performed b{ soldiers without pay. Twelve men are kept busy all the time cooking and cleaning. The bed coverings are subjected to constant fumigation. They are bung in a room next the bathing tank and the room is shut up and a quantity of sulphur is burned. The sulphur is said to kill things. A large prccronion of the applicants are well-disposed men who are simply “down on their luck.” Many of them are thankful for a chance to take a dip in the pathing tank. These are the men who are sent upstairs. The practical eye of the officer on the door is qmick to distinguish between them. The others—the drunks and “fiends,” the ruck and wreck of men—are sent along | into the tin room, where the smel: of sul- phur is stifling and tne air is palpitating with oaths and obscenity. All the other stories, it will have been noticed, pitiful as they were, are redeemed by the triumph of virtue in the end. That of Captain Woods, in not being so, is the most pitiful of all. In telling his story he did not say aword. He walked on through the little dark passage, rolled back the heavy door of the old warehouse and made a light. There is still another story by En- sign McFee out at the army head- quarters on Market street, where troops of barefoot children come and are supplied with shoes, and where, on the books, there is a long list of the names of women, poor, desolate and otherwise deserted in their age, who are constantly looked after and cared for, and where the very wretched go daily and are suH;lied with medicine and necessaries. There is still another story down on Bryant street, and a very pretty one. There is a house full of children unaer the care of Lieutenant Ella Fisher. A one- time mansion in the one-time aristo- cratic quarter of San Francisco has been turned into a ‘‘children’s shelter,” and presents some interesting contrasts. With some fine old trees still standing guard in front the big bay-windows of the mansion look out from their slight retire- ment upon unpaved streets and s ing squalor. Inside the place is little ones. Children of 6 are daressing and attending the wants of children of 3. 1n a room somewhat removed from the clamor there is a sick child under the especial care of the lieutenant. [n another room a feeble-minded Japanese child sits on the floor and sways its little body in silence by the hour. A troop of healthy children are romping in the vard. The walls of the long draw- ing-room of the old mansion are half covered with a blackboard uvon which are fignres and rude drawings. In the parlor across the hall, and standing by a piano, are a banjo and a tambourine and the red flags of the army. The dining- room is a little story in itself. 1Itisa long one, intended evidently for a_ hospitable table. One end of the room is occupied by an immense old fireplace with big pro- truding chimney, crane and andirons. The floor is bare, and down the length of the rcom stretches a plain board table and plain benches. Forgetting the time and lace these benches naturally fill up with gearded knights in big top boots who drink deeply out of long pewter mugs and sing ribald songs and toast the barony and mingle strange oaths. But over the center of the table, sus- pended from the gas fixture, is the still stranger legend, destroying at once the baronial idea: *‘Christ is the head of this house, the unseen guest at every meal, the silent listener to every conversation.” There are twenty-nine children in the shelter, ranging from 1to 10 years. Li tenant Fisher, with three assistants, takes care of them. Neither of these four receives any pay. ’IYhere are still other stories, but these will do. I was present when General Booth first met his congregated soldiers on this coast. It was at the pavilion in Oakland. The big building was crowded beyond the doors. When the commandant came upon the platform with his lieutenants there was an uproar of drums and horns and cheers and wnving of flags that lasted many minutes. With exhaustion, how- ever, a aeep stillness followed, while they waited to hear the commander speak. With hands on the red-covered desk in front of him, his long body leaning over it, he addressed them like a father, saying: “My beautiful, beautiful people.” I greatly regret what I said about Ser- geant Carson not being pretty. Foritis not true.