Chapter 37

WHAT REDBURN SAW IN LAUNCELOTT'S-HEY

The dead-house reminds me of other sad things; for in the vicinity of
the docks are many very painful sights.

In going to our boarding-house, the sign of the Baltimore Clipper, I
generally passed through a narrow street called "Launcelott's-Hey,"
lined with dingy, prison-like cotton warehouses. In this street, or
rather alley, you seldom see any one but a truck-man, or some solitary
old warehouse-keeper, haunting his smoky den like a ghost.

Once, passing through this place, I heard a feeble wail, which seemed to
come out of the earth. It was but a strip of crooked side-walk where I
stood; the dingy wall was on every side, converting the mid-day into
twilight; and not a soul was in sight. I started, and could almost have
run, when I heard that dismal sound. It seemed the low, hopeless,
endless wail of some one forever lost. At last I advanced to an opening
which communicated downward with deep tiers of cellars beneath a
crumbling old warehouse; and there, some fifteen feet below the walk,
crouching in nameless squalor, with her head bowed over, was the figure
of what had been a woman. Her blue arms folded to her livid bosom two
shrunken things like children, that leaned toward her, one on each side.
At first, I knew not whether they were alive or dead. They made no sign;
they did not move or stir; but from the vault came that soul-sickening
wail.

I made a noise with my foot, which, in the silence, echoed far and near;
but there was no response. Louder still; when one of the children lifted
its head, and cast upward a faint glance; then closed its eyes, and lay
motionless. The woman also, now gazed up, and perceived me; but let fall
her eye again. They were dumb and next to dead with want. How they had
crawled into that den, I could not tell; but there they had crawled to
die. At that moment I never thought of relieving them; for death was so
stamped in their glazed and unimploring eyes, that I almost regarded
them as already no more. I stood looking down on them, while my whole
soul swelled within me; and I asked myself, What right had any body in
the wide world to smile and be glad, when sights like this were to be
seen? It was enough to turn the heart to gall; and make a man-hater of a
Howard. For who were these ghosts that I saw? Were they not human
beings? A woman and two girls? With eyes, and lips, and ears like any
queen? with hearts which, though they did not bound with blood, yet beat
with a dull, dead ache that was their life.

At last, I walked on toward an open lot in the alley, hoping to meet
there some ragged old women, whom I had daily noticed groping amid foul
rubbish for little particles of dirty cotton, which they washed out