Toronto News

“ MORE ABOUT THE UNION STATION.
The vast, smoky building facing the Esplanade between York and Simcoe streets is a great theater in which are enacted some of the strangest scenes in life in this city. Through it day and night a tide of human life with all its joy and misery, with all its wealth and poverty, flows continually. East, west and north, day and night, trains go thundering on their way, infusing fresh blood and vigor throughout all the land. ”

“ One is as cool as if he were engaged in a game of euchre for the drinks; the lips of the other twitch nervously, his face is as pale as the whisky blotches will allow it to be, and his eyes have a peculiar shifting motion, as if he apprehended danger. But look at the coons! Their wooly heads are pushed forward till their necks look as long as a plumber’s bill, their protruding eyes are as stationary as a fascinated gamester at a faro table, and their great flat nostrils are dilated so as to almost engulph their mobile lips, from which no sounds are issued. ”

“ Every generous thought fades away more completely than a misty dream when they face each other at the poker table, and when they succeed in roping in a wealthy “sucker,” they become night-hawks indeed, and swoop down on their unsuspecting prey with a force and ferocity that cannot be resisted. All thieves? Aye, cruel, heartless thieves.
There are other gamblers who affect—nothing. Too strongly in love with whisky to have much money, they simply drift on and on until the drunkard’s grave or a government prison affords them a harbor of refuge. ”

“ FURTIVE LOOK OF THE TRAMP, who never dared to strengthen his supplications by a straightforward gaze; he is no longer a wanderer and homeless vagrant on the face of an earth whose spring-time blossoms had no message for him or his kind. He has forgotten already the cold nights passed in the streets or in the parks; the questionable benefit of a troubled sleep in some frowsy ten-cent lodging-house; the pitiful struggle, reversed day after day, to obtain enough food to keep soul and body together. For the rest of his life he doubtless counts on being beyond the reach of actual want. ”

“ On either side of the column march a mob of men, women and urchins, some jeering them, others sympathizing with them, while hundreds tramp along out of sheer curiosity. The crowd thickens, sways forward anxious to obtain favorable seats in the hall, as it is now known to all them that there is going to be a “knee drill and an all night hand to hand fight with the devil while the gates of hell are to be stormed towards morning by the forlorn hope.” ”

“ A few lawyers come through a side door in a great hurry, fling their bags down on the table, glance at the clock, look very much relieved, give the crowd behind the rail a sharp, shrewd glance which takes them in one and all, even to the gurgling baby in the arms of that woman with the wet red mouth and the big moist eye. The reporters come rushing in, glance over the docket, nod to the lawyers, whisper with a policeman, fling their paper on the table, borrow somebody’s knife and set about industriously sharpening their pencils. ”

“ Almost all of these tenement houses are a perfect baby-burrow of children, untaught, unwashed, unkempt, enfants perdus of the gutter, the protoplasm out of which the great Sin and the yet greater Misery of our city is certain to shape itself in the future! Presently, three or four able-bodied young men come in from what they call work. A sinister-looking young woman in frowsy dress, the cut across her whisky-sodden face telling its tale of last night’s revel, joins the group. The eldest child is sent with a cracked jug for beer to the corner saloon. ”

“ Now and then a stray hack rumbles by, the noise of the wheels gradually dying away in the distance and leaving no other sound audible. The night watchman passes, carefully trying the doors of the stores and halting for a friendly chat with the policeman on the corner of the block. The puffing of the locomotive or steamboat engine a mile or two away, inaudible during the day-time, sounds strangely near. Up and down the long stretches of sidewalk hardly anyone is in sight. It is like a city of the dead. ”

“ Other forms of crime skulk in the daylight, coming forth only when the dark hours favor their calling, but these birds of prey hang out the signs of their nefarious calling at high noon, and strut the streets shaming the honest and demoralizing the weak. The girl who has worked all day until brain and fingers and limbs are tired, returning homewards at nightfall, compares her uneventful, dreary lot with the seemingly joyous existence of these women, looks at her own shabby gown and at their rich ones, and inwardly wonders if honesty, truth and worth are, after all, the best. ”

“ The General hospital, therefore, is, as well as the jail, an institution which the battered and enfeebled sinner resorts to when he can no longer stand up against the world’s buffets. You will find them there, the children of slothfulness and inebriety. Charity refuses to condemn them for faults which have their root in that weakness which is to a greater or lesser degree inherent in our common humanity. ”

“ The poor homeless, friendless little outcasts, who make the street their home because they haven’t a better one to go to, are those of whom I wish particularly to speak. They are the sport of chance and the children of misfortune. They find themselves in the midst of the stern battle of life, fighting for an existence, years before the children of well-to-do parents have taken the first step toward preparing themselves for the fray. It is not a matter of astonishment that the majority of them grow up to become part of our criminal population. ”

“ They are in rags and filthy, and an unholy and pungent atmosphere, suggestive of an ancient distillery, pervades their surroundings. These aromatic gentry, as I before stated, are tramps, proper, pure, and simple. The nomadic harbingers and epitomes of all that is squalid, wretched, and poverty-stricken in the land. Hopeless, hungry, and miserable, they tramp on their weary way, friendless, forgotten, and unknown until, upon the mattrass of some jail hospital, or out in the fields beneath the stars, they breathe their last and take their final tramp. ”

“ The pickpocket who steals your watch, the burglar who invades your house in the middle of the night, or the foot-pad who knocks you down with a sand-bag, are citizens whom it is rather unpleasant to have any experience with, but it were better a thousand times to become the prey of any of these hawks of the night than that of those pitiless kites—the scarlet women of a great city. ”

“ She who has good looks and youth is a continual eyesore to the woman whose lustre of girlhood is a thing now of memory. She is hated and slandered, and she glories in the fact because it is a tribute to qualities which she has that they have not. But her hour comes too soon and too surely, and a younger rival hurries her down the slope, to be herself displaced in turn as the months go by, leaving their impress of dissipation.
Envy and hatred of each other are common characteristics, and the same may be said of lying, intemperance and profanity. ”

“ The huge barn-like edifice is filled as if by magic and by all classes of citizens, from the devout woman sitting patiently in front, who has come to listen and to pray, down to the brazen-faced night hawk in the jockey cap and bangs, who has come to see and be seen and to make a mash if she finds a victim. ”

“ One may have some admiration for the brute courage of a man who takes the risk of death for the sake of ill-gotten gains of any kind. But what respect can we have for the thing that escapes labor by sticking like a barnacle to the hardly-earned comforts of a home on the strength of an affection that is all one-sided—that takes everything and gives nothing. But there is a class of young men in the city who do this. Fellows whom you see hanging about in the daytime, doing anything else but making an honest living, and whom you will find at night in improper places at all hours. ”

“ Not long ago, at a Police Court trial, the Magistrate remarked that he looked upon a professional gambler as a more degraded being than a common street thief, and explained his meaning by adding that a thief boldly takes the chances of securing his spoil or a term in prison, while the gambler first secures the confidence of his victim, and then by subtle cheating robs him of his money. And yet as a Police Commissioner he details about two hundred constables and seven detectives to hunt down the thieves, and allows the gambling hells to flourish on the principal streets. ”

“ The express going west had made up by this time, and the crowd on the platform was thickening. Cabs and omnibusses rattled down York and Simcoe streets and drew up on the Esplanade front. A large group of well dressed people, flowery with buttonhole and hand bouquets, smiles, and laughter came sweeping in. In the center of the group is a handsome girl, with flushed face and unnaturally bright eyes, whose every motion is nervous and constrained. ”

“ The station and its surroundings are like some mighty fort stocked with inexhaustible supplies, sending out hourly sorties against the unlocked resources of a great country, and coming back triumphantly, laden with spoil for the enriching of the nations. At almost any hour of the day or night the scene at the Union station is an interesting one, especially to the student of human nature. ”

“ THE STREET-LOUNGERS, male and female, disappear one by one, the stores have closed their doors, until the only places which show signs of business activity are here and there a saloon or a tobacco store, which may or may not have a keg of lager on tap in the back-room or a “little game” upstairs. Now the streets again assume for a few minutes a lively aspect as the places of amusement are emptied of their audiences. Overladen street cars make their final trips, toiling wearily up the ascent with frequent stoppages as the suburbs are neared. ”

“ She is not [22] naturally bad, but her training had been such as to make her believe that any way by which good clothes, nice food and some fun could be obtained with little work, was the way which it was best to take. She forgot or never comprehended her loathsome, beastly shame, and compared her slovenly, loveless childhood with her present condition of rich fare, fine feathers, lovers, race-meetings and theaters, and decided that the latter was the best. Poor girl—poor wretch, I might say—if she could only pierce the future and see the end of it all. ”

“ I never yet preached a temperance sermon to any man; perhaps because I feel I have no right to, but I say to you that I am firmly convinced that drink deadens everything that is best in man. Let a young man be distinguished for his domestic affections, for gratitude, for chivalry to woman, or any other noble quality, and then let him take to drink, and as sure as night succeeds day piece by piece these virtues will vanish from his character, and be succeeded by brutal indifference, selfishness, and weak wilfulness. ”

“ He is too much of a coward to commit crime and take chances of the penitentiary. When the day comes that his indignant father will stand him no longer, and kicks him out of doors, the choice of working, stealing, or starving is presented to him. He may steal now, often with a view to revenging himself on the people who have stood his disgraceful idleness so long. He will do anything that is dirty, or mean, or unprincipled rather than work, and the eternal justice is served when the penitentiary that fairly yearns for him scoops him in. ”

“ The few stragglers on the streets only serve to make the general impression of silence and solitude the more vivid by contrast. Here and there is a pedestrian on his homeward way, or perhaps a party of two or three late roysterers laughing and bursting into snatches of song, but growing suddenly silent and bracing up as the measured tread of the blue-coated guardian of the night approaches. ”

“ There is no romance in the lives of evil women. Everything about them is gross, sordid and mercenary. The master passion of their lives is not sensuality, but a greed for money and display conjoined with envy and all uncharitableness. They are the slaves of the vile women who keep the houses in which they live. ”

“ Are they aware that many young men highly connected in Toronto, have not only blasted their reputations and their prospects, but have rendered themselves liable to a felon’s doom by robbing their employers to pay an “honorable” debt at cards,—a debt never really contracted excepting through the medium of marked cards or like devices? If they be not aware of these things let them study the police records, and should they not be successful in their search let them accompany a detective on night duty in his rambles through Toronto by Gas-light. ”

“ The young gambler, his tailor’s pride, degenerates into the sniveling aged tramp, who in fluttering rags begs for a crust of bread at the poorhouse door, or else his elegant limbs wear penitential uniform behind the prison bars. The descent of the wicked woman is still more awful, still more shocking. ”

“ It is seldom possible to watch the whole career of an abandoned woman. As they step lower and lower in abasement they keep moving from city to city until they reach a stage where the next descent must be into the grave. It is, therefore, difficult to trace their progress, from the “high-toned” fast house to the hospital pallet where they finish a life of loathsomeness by a still more loathsome death.
It has been calculated that the average span of existence for a woman who embraces a life of shame does not average more than five or six years. ”