Stephen H. Branch's Alligator, Vol. 1 no. 06, May 29, 1858

Stephen H. Branch's Alligator, Vol. 1 no. 06, May 29, 1858

In 1841, I (Stephen H. Branch) went into the law office of Mr. Seely, in Fulton street, who, being absent, I awaited his return. He had an interesting boy to open his office and run errands. I asked him if he was a native of the city, and he said yes, and told me that his father and mother were dead, and that his grandmother had recently died, and that his only surviving relative was an aunt, who was an actress, and travelling over the country, and that she seldom visited the city, which made him feel very lonely and unhappy. I asked him if he would like to have me teach him gratuitously, and he said he wouldthat he was at school in Connecticut before his grandmother died, and was obliged to close his studies in consequence of her deathand that he would have travelled with his aunt, after his grandmother died, if she had not made him promise on her bed of death, that he would never become an actor. I saw genius in the youth, and strongly sympathised with his loneliness and misfortunes, and soon began to teach him during his leisure hours. His aunt was long absent, and sent him no money, and the lady with whom he boarded got uneasy, and I took him to board with me, at Mrs. Mitchells, in Broadway, with whom Otto Dressel, the Reverend Doctor George Potts music teacher, subsequently boarded in Bond, and at the corner of Houston and McDougal streets. While we boarded with Mrs. Mitchell, an English boy came there, and formed his acquaintance, who had recently come to America with a German traveller. They were about the same age, and congenial from mutual loneliness, and they immediately formed a devoted friendship. I taught them, both in English and Latin, and I dearly loved them. I did all I could to please them, and improve their minds, and I took them to Flushing, and Newark, and Albany, for pastime. The English boy left the city with the German traveller, and was absent several months. I got the American boy situations in lawyers offices and dry goods stores, where he seldom stayed long, and he became a great tax on my limited means, but I clung to him in my darkest hours. He told me that he desired to dine at the Astor House,[Pg 3] with the son of a lawyer, in whose employ he had been. I rather doubted his story, but let him go. Soon afterwards, he requested me to let him go again, and I did so, going myself, soon after he left me, and took a position near the door, after the gong had summoned the boarders to dinner. On emerging from the dining room after dinner, I asked him where the son of the lawyer was. He said that he was in the dining hall. I told him that I would like an introduction to him. His cheeks were naturally as red as a rose, but my unexpected presence, and request for an introduction to the lawyers son, made his face as pale as a ghosts, and I saw that he had stolen his dinner, which he slowly acknowledged, and admitted that he had dined twice at the Astor without an intention to pay for his dinners, and that he knew no son of a lawyer residing at the Astor House. I violently upbraided him, and told him that he would ultimately become the tenant of a prison, and perhaps die on the scaffold, if he did not check his thievish propensities. He said that I observed small things, which so provoked me, that I told him I must abandon him,that he was in the bud and blossom of the precarious Spring, and easily blighted for ever by a frost or tempest,that even the mighty oak, that has defied the storms of centuries, is felled to the earth by a blast of lightning,and that the towering avalanche, which is formed from silent and solitary flakes of snow, could bury the largest city of the globe. He evinced great sorrow, and cried bitterly, and assured me that he would never steal another meal. I then paid for both dinners, and left the Astor, and kept a close guard over his movements. In about three weeks, he was arrested for an attempt to rifle a mans pocket in Wall street. The gentleman did not appear against him, and he was discharged. I then went to an actor to ascertain in what part of the country his aunt was, and immediately wrote to her, and she came to the city, and I surrendered the thievish boy to her future protection. She got him a boarding place, and left the city to fulfil her theatrical engagement. He urged me afterwards to give him a recommendation to the extensive wholesale dry goods firm of Fearing & Hall, in Exchange Place. I told him that I would do them great injustice, as he might steal, and then they would hold me responsible. But he said his aunt had not sent him money for a long time, and that he had nowhere to live, and wept aloud, in Chatham street, and so wrought upon my feelings, that I consented to recommend him. During my interview[Pg 4] with Mr. Fearing, (who was the senior partner of the firm,) he said that out of one hundred responses to his advertisement for a clerk, he had chosen my young friend, because he was pleased with his appearance and address, and that he was the only boy out of the one hundred who had removed his hat on entering his counting room. I had a year previous told the boy to always remove his hat when he entered the presence of a lady or gentleman, and this was the propitious fruit of his recollection and exercise of the politeness I had imparted. Mr. Fearing also said that although he could get the boys of affluent parents for nothing, (who deemed the knowledge of business they would acquire as a compensation for their services,) yet he was so pleased with my young friend, that he would give sufficient means to support him, if he proved industrious, and displayed the talents he thought he discovered in him. I left, and the boy went on the following day as a clerk of this extensive firm, who soon informed me that their anticipations were realised as to the capacity of the boy,that he was as quick as a flash, in all his movements, and was more valuable to them than any boy they ever had. Mr. Fearing made him presents of apparel, and paid his board, and gave him pocket money, and treated him like his own son. He soon got into the habit of attending balls, and places of amusement. Money was missed, and although traced to him, yet Mr. Fearing kindly forgave him. More soon disappeared, and was fastened upon him, and he was discharged, amid the tears of Mr. Fearing, who fondly loved him. He alternately boarded in Fulton and John streets, and borrowed an elegant pair of tight dancing pantaloons of a fellow boarder and companion, named Robert M. Strebeigh, who is now the first book-keeper, and one of the proprietors of the New York Tribune, and a near relative of Mr. McElrath. He wore the pants to a ball, and stained them, and burst them, and never returned them, which sorely troubled poor Strebeigh for a long time, and I often have a laugh with Strebeigh at this remote day about those pants, but he can never smile when I allude to the loss of his fancy ball pantaloons. Some months later, he was arrested for stealing clothing, and had an accomplice, who escaped. He was arrested at the Battery, while getting into an omnibus, and strove to bribe the officer with money. I went to the Tombs to see him, and wrote to his aunt, who came to the city. She was (and is) an actress of uncommon talent, and enacted the leading characters of Shakespeare. I had[Pg 5] often seen her elicit tears from a vast assemblage, with her affected pathos. But now I beheld her unaffected sorrow, and heard her piercing cries for the deliverance of her nephew from his dreary and degraded confinement. And her strong, clear, and musical voice, and large, dark, penetrating eyes, and uplifted arms, and dishevelled hair, and rapid pace too and fro, and furious gesticulation, and frenzied glances, harrowed my feelings beyond endurance, and I had to shield myself as far as possible from her pitiful and overwhelming presence. I went to the Tombs, and saw the boy, and told him his aunt had arrived, and he desired to see her. I returned and told her his request, and she exclaimed: I know he wants to see his beloved auntthe dear, dear boy, with no father, nor mother, and his kind old grandmother also deadI know he yearns to see his only surviving relativethe dear, darling, unfortunate boy, and I will go to see him, and kiss him, and comfort him in his dreary dungeon, and die with him, in his captivity, if necessary, and thus she soliloquised and wept in tones of strangulation, while arranging her shawl and bonnet before the glass, and I cried also, and besought her not to go, as I did not desire to witness the harrowing prison scene between herself and beloved nephew. But she assured me that she would control her feelings, and would not weep, nor evince extraordinary emotion in his cell, if I would accompany her. I doubted her power of dissimulation, when she beheld her nephew, in his narrow cell, with a stone and block for his bed and pillow, and restrained of his liberty by locks, bars, bolts, and chains. But she most earnestly assured me that she could master her sympathies, and appealed to her control of her passions on the stage, as evidence of her ability to subdue her feelings in a prison. She did not convince, but smiled like an angel through her tears, and persuaded me to go in accents that would have conquered and melted a fiend into submission. On our arrival at the Tombs, her eyes were excited with fear, and as we ascended the steps that led to the cell, she trembled like a little girl, and hoped I would pardon her tremulation, as it was her first appearance in a real prison, and trusted it would be the last. I tranquilized her fears, and we enter his cell, and when she beholds his pale and sad and lovely face, she screams, and embraces, and hugs, and kisses him, until it seems she will strangle and devour him. After the shock, she slowly recovers herself, and adheres, as far as possible, to her pledge to check her agony, until we arise to leave him, when I behold a scene between herself and nephew, far more affecting than I ever witnessed on the stage of a theatre, or in human life. She raved and pulled her hair, and pressed him to her panting bosom, as though she was bidding him an eternal farewell, prior to his immediate departure for the scaffold. The boy becomes alarmed, as she had almost suffocated him with affection, and in his herculean efforts to extricate his neck from her terrible Bearish embraces, they both fell violently on the floor of the cell, when I implored her to release her grasp, lest she would strangle him. But she was in a trance of affection, and was utterly unconscious, and the boy soon cries for instant succor, or he must die, when I seize her with all the strength I could summon, and after a severe struggle (in which I tear the apparel of both, and scratch their faces,) I separate them, and in half an hour, through the most tender persuasion, I effect her emergence from the cell, amid an avalanche of renewed embraces, and mutual kisses, and parting words. On leaving the cell, a captive (who had the freedom of the prison, and whose heart was moved by the noise in the cell, and the touching presence of the lady,) beckoned me aside, and told me that[Pg 6] a friend of his got out of prison the day before for thirty dollars, and that he expected to obtain his liberty the following day for twenty dollars, which was all the money he could raise. I asked him how it could be done. He said that Abraham D. Russell was the lawyer of himself and friend, and got a great many guilty persons out of prison for a small sum of money, and that if I would consult him, he could easily get my young friend out in a day or two. I thanked him kindly, and left the prison with the boys aunt, and to restrain her tears, I immediately imparted to her the pleasing news I had heard. She was almost frantic with joy, and said that although she had not much money in consequence of the great expense attending her suit, then pending for divorce, against her brutal husband, yet she would pawn her jewelry and theatrical wardrobe, if necessary, to release her nephew from his dreadful incarceration. I told her the prisoner said that it would cost only thirty dollars, which she promised to raise as soon as she could send the servant to the pawnbrokers. I escorted her to the boarding house, and left her to procure the money, while I went to Mr. Russells office, to ascertain if the prisoner told the truth. Mr. Russell was absent, but his boy, Theodore Stuyvesant, (recently a member of the New York Legislature,) said he would soon return, and in about ten minutes he came into the office. I briefly stated the case, and he said that for thirty dollars in advance, he would have the boy restored to liberty. I ran to the boys aunt, and told her the precious news, and she let me have thirty dollars, which she borrowed from the stage manager of a theatre in this city, and thus saved the wounded heart and cruel sacrifice that are the sure result of forced dealings with pawnbrokers. I hastened to Mr. Russells office, and cheerfully gave him the thirty dollars, and went to the prison and told the boy what I had done, who was wild with delight. On the following morning, I went early to the Court of Sessions, and a gang of thieves made their appearance, and were huddled like sheep in a corner of the Court Room. I had firmly refused the request of the boys aunt to be present, and if I had not, I think she would never have survived the awful scene. To behold a youth so beautiful and classical, amid a group of ugly burglars of all hues, and of either sex, was a spectacle that painfully disgusted me, and made me almost sick of life, but I disguised my feelings as far as I could, and rivetted my eyes on the boy and the officer who called the prisoners for trial and sentence, which were nearly simultaneous. The boys name was near the close of the list, and was not called that day, and he was remanded to his cell. Throughout the painful scene, I was writhing with suppressed anger, at the absence of Mr. Russell, and after the boy was remanded to prison, I rushed to Russells office in terrible anger. I demanded why he had abandoned the boy after receiving thirty dollars, and that if three more prisoners had been called to appear in front of the Judge for trial, my young friends name would have been reached on the list of culprits, and he doubtless would have been condemned and sentenced to the States Prison for the want, perhaps, of a lawyer to defend him. Russell said that he was busy, and could not be in the Court of Sessions to defend him; but that he would certainly be there on the following day, and save him. As he had got the thirty dollars in his relentless grasp, I deemed it expedient to restrain my anger, and try his integrity once more. The morning came, and the thieves were again driven like cattle into the Court Room, and I soon discovered the bright eyes and noble features of my young friend among the hideous and wretched criminals. But Mr. Russell was not there, and I inquired for him, and a young[Pg 7] lawyer told me that he was in the ante-room, whither I literally flew, and asked him why he did not come into the Court Room, and he prepared to defend the boy, as the Judge was in his seat, and the prisoners were about to be called and tried. He told me not to be in such a flurry, and that he should come when he pleased, and not before, which so exasperated me, that I cried out: Then give me the thirty dollars I gave you to effect his liberty. He stared at me with his bad and revengeful eyes, like an owl in a midnight tempest, but he breathed not a syllable. Several persons heard my voice in the Court Room, and came into the ante-room. I then exclaimed: You black looking rascal, restore the thirty dollars instantly, or I will tear you to pieces. This terrified him, and he gently took my arm, and besought me, in Gods name, to be silent, and not expose him, and most solemnly declared that he would go immediately into the Court Room, and have the boys trial postponed, and that he would get his sacred friend, Frederick A. Tallmadge, the Recorder, to permit him to be discharged on bail in a few days. This pacified me, and he went into the Court Room, where I watched his movements as a cat does a rat, and presently he caught the eye of the Judge, and smiles and winks were simultaneously exchanged, and the boys trial was postponed, and he was again conducted to his gloomy cell. On the second day following, Mr. Russell, myself, the boys aunt, and a well clad, and very genteel one-arm man, went to the office of Frederick A. Tallmadge, the Recorder, and the Straw Bail Court was opened, in whose infamous proceedings I enacted as vile a part as Russell or Tallmadge, or the neatly attired, and otto-perfumed, and sleek haired one-arm man, who was engaged by Russell to be the spurious bail, although my motives were on the side of humanity, and theirs on the side of gilded lucre. The Recorder said: Well, Mr. Russell, please state your case, and Russell said: A lad is confined in the Tombs on a charge of stealing clothing. That he is guilty of theft is not yet proved, as he has not had his trial. But his aunt and friends are here in deep affliction, in whose name I most devoutly pray that your honor will release the boy on bail, with a solemn pledge from his aunt and friends that he will immediately be sent to sea. A few winks, and blinks, and intelligent smiles, graced the eyes, and lips, and cheeks, and temples of several persons present, while the Recorder was considering the merits of the case, with his perturbed and thoughtful visage buried within his hands, which he anon removed, and desired the friend of the boy to come forward, who was prepared to be his bail, and presto! the long-haired, and smiling, and smooth-faced, and fragrant, and well dressed one-arm man, appeared in front of the Recorder, and with a great display of New York or London assurance, he signed the document that restored to liberty one of the shrewdest little rogues of the age. The boys aunt thanked Mr. Russell and the Recorder, and the one-arm man and myself went through the same formality, (I apologising to Russell for my harsh words at the Tombs,) and we separated, and the boys aunt went home in an omnibus, and I went to the Tombs, to witness the discharge of the culprit captive boy. He was released from his cell, and both Turnkey and Russell warned me to beware of the Judge, and we descended the prison steps, and I shall never forget the shock we received as we were passing through the prison yard, at meeting the Sessions Judge, who had just got information of Russells operations, and would doubtless have detained the boy until he got his share of the thirty dollars from Russell. But the boy adroitly, and like lightning, turned[Pg 8] his head, and the Judge passed on without recognising or suspecting that the boy was already on his way to liberty. We paused a moment at the prison gate and desk, where the boys name was carefully examined on the books, and the boy severely scrutinised, and the clerks imparted their sly and extremely expressive leers, and the last prison gate was opened, and the boy was free, and went to his aunts boarding house, and rushed into her arms, who swooned, and fell like a corpse to the floor, and was with difficulty restored to consciousness. Like the pure and noble Socrates, I always conceived it a monstrous crime to illegally effect the liberation of captives, and I repeat, that in all this violation of law, and stupendous villainy, I knew that I was enacting as vile a part as Russell and Tallmadge, and the One-Arm Straw Bail Scamp, but it has always been a pleasing solace to know that sympathy, and not money, led me to embark in a plot to effect the liberation of a notorious little convict. Lawyer Russell and Recorder Tallmadge subsequently became (and are now) the City Judge and Superintendent of Police of the great commercial metropolis of the Western World, and the one-arm man I recently saw in Broadway, and on the steps of the Tombs, as glossy as ever with sweet oil and broadcloth, and who always reminded me of that class of conspirators under the monster Cataline, whom Cicero describes as past all hope of a restoration to private or public virtue. I subsequently learned that the one-arm man was a penniless and cunning and thievish vagabond, and had subsisted for years from what he got from straw bail lawyers, for being bail to prisoners. I do not positively know that the Recorder knew he was utterly irresponsible, and even if he did, he may have accepted him as bail, from motives of the purest humanity, although, in doing so, he must have known that he was violating and degrading his position as a leading City Magistrate, and that he was treacherous and ungrateful to the people who kindly elected him to protect their lives and property from the thieves and murderers of the metropolis. But we are of the opinion that Russell powerfully aided Tallmadge in his election as Recorder, and that there was collusion between them, and that they both knew what a miserable scamp and outcast the straw bail one-arm man was and is to this day. It now devolved on me to send the boy to sea, and the aunt signified her readiness to aid me, and to procure his sea clothes, and the boy was willing to go, and I went on board of several vessels, and at last obtained him a situation as cabin boy, but his health was very delicate, and I feared he would die, and I could not let him go to sea. I then proposed that he should visit the village in Connecticut, where he went to school before his grandmother died, in order to recruit his health, and his aunt gave him some money, and he left for the country, to return in the autumn, and obtain a situation in some respectable pursuit. His aunt left the city, to join her theatrical company, and I continued in my business as teacher of colored and Irish and other servants. I soon received a letter from the boy, informing me that he was in a very melancholy moodthat his old school mates had all left the village, and the people with whom he formerly boarded had learned of his thefts through the newspapers, and he desired to return to the city. I wrote immediately, and directed him to come to the city, and I would strive to get him a place to learn a trade, and did so, but he soon left, and got into vicious society, and I had to let him pursue his own course, as I was very poor and ill, and he had nearly worn me to the grave. The next I heard of him, was that he had been arrested in Philadelphia, and taken to Boston,[Pg 9] where he had committed forgery, in connection with an old convict. He wrote me several letters from the Boston jail, which I could scarcely read, in consequence of their melancholy character. I wrote to his aunt in vain, as she either did not receive my letters, or, if she did, concluded to leave him to his awful fate. He turned States evidence, and thus got his term of punishment reduced from five to three years. I visited him at the prison in Charlestown, and I was the only person of his acquaintance, who went to see him during his long imprisonment. I also, by his request, sent him the New York Evangelist and Observer, and other New York papers. The kind Superintendent of the Prison often wrote me, that the boy was popular with the officers of the Prison, and also with the prisoners in the Sunday school, and prayer meetings, and in the debating Society of the captives, and was a leader in all the religious and musical and literary exercises of the prison. His time expired, and he came to New York, and immediately flew to me. I gave him money, and he soon ascertained in what part of the country his aunt was engaged in her profession of theatricals, and he soon found her, and became an actor, although he had promised his Grandmother on her dying bed that he would never be an actor. He subsequently performed in this city, at Burtons in Chamber street, and Burton discharged him and leveled a revolver at his head, for a suspected intimacy with an actress. He went to Providence, where we saw him perform at the Theatre in Westminster street. The New York Police Gazette attacked him and exposed his antecedents, whose publication he assured me Burton obtained and paid for, to injure him and drive him from this section of the country, and I told him he had no right to cast affectionate glances at Burtons actress; that Burton was justified in his revenges even unto death, and I advised him to leave New England and the central States, and he did, and got married, and had children, and I recently saw his affable and accomplished aunt, who told me that her nephew had risen to the summit of his profession, and that he was a good husband and father, and that he was rapidly accumulating a splendid fortune. And now, dear reader, you may enjoy this exciting and truthful narrative, but I do not. And I will tell you the reason why. This boy has become a valuable member of society, and entertains multitudes of his species, and excites their mirth and grateful sadness, and arouses their hatred of dishonor and oppression, and is, like every meritorious actor, an honor and a benefactor of his race. And hence it is most acutely painful to array his past sad career before his vision and the world. And yet I had to disclose his melancholy story, in order to expose the rascality of the officials of this Metropolis. And here again I am in sack cloth. For Judge Russell is the ardent friend of James Gordon Bennett, who has clung to me in days of illness and penury and gloom, when I often expected to drop dead in the streets of New York. And then again, Wm. Curtis Noyes married the favorite daughter of Superintendent Frederick A. Tallmadge, and Mr. Noyes has been like a brother to me, and has loaned me money to buy bread and shoes during my recent pecuniary calamities, when nearly every being on the face of Gods earth refused to loan me a farthing to save my trembling frame from starvation. I weep (as few ever wept, over these melancholy lines), to find myself compelled to hold up to wasteless scorn, the friends and relatives of Wm. Curtis Noyes and James Gordon Bennett, but I would trample the bones and ashes of my father in his coffin, if I knew that he died with the odium on his forehead, that will pursue Russell and Tallmadge to their graves, and forever degrade their unfortunate posterity. If murder is never out-lawed, these crimes are still fresh, and the culprits should be punished. And shall friendship screen those public monsters, who render New York a purgatory, through their official protection of thieves and assassins, and the whole catalogue of human devils? Nothing but a voice from Heaven could have saved the head of Benedict Arnold, if George Washington had got him in his clutches. And shall Russell and Tallmadge and other traitors to justice and the people, be screened from the public execration, because I love the humanity and private succor of their friends and kindred? No, no. In tones of thunder and earthquakes, and the crash of a trillion worlds, no, no, no. I now have a Press to expose the public villains, and I will stab down to ignominious graves, and to hell itself, all the plunderers and murderers and accursed traitors of my adored country. And I defy the Universe in arms to paralyze the Will that dissects the precocious monsters of this pernicious age. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 49021
Author: Branch, Stephen H.
Release Date: May 22, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: English

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Editor: Branch, Stephen H