AT SUPPER WITH THE LAPSED MASSES.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 4987, 17 March 1877, Page 2 (Supplement)

AT SUPPER WITH THE LAPSED MASSES.

(By our Sunday Casual)

One hoarse cry ! a shout, a sharp struggle, and I am struggling, battling, edging, diving in one surging mass of rags, filth, and wretchec - ness, everyone of whom has, and has had since it was opened half an hour ago, one centre of attraction; that open door of the Drill Hall, Greendyke-street. At length I am fairly lifted off my feet and carried by sheer force - past the two policemen who guard the door, past the three or four workers who stand to r collect the tickets through the little outer door and vestibule, and find myself staring wonderinslv at some two thousand people gathered together, assembled there on Saturday night by invitation to bid farewell to the past year, and to welcome the new, by a supper consisting of plum-pudding, cake, currant and Scotch buns, bread, and tea. Iho .squeeze I had undergone in getting m (having •in so doing left some few hundreds or so clamoring still outside), seemed to reflect ; itself in the first glance at the hall. Jivery- * thing and everybody there bore the aspect of being squeezed. In fact it seemed as it all the squalor, poverty, grisliness, ghastliness, i loathsomeness, and helplessness of Glasgow jhad been squeezed out of all the dens, holes, .and rookeries into that one hall. The one in- - . ecstjaut murmur too without, seemed to be car- | ried on within, and what with the wheeling of I Igigantio hampers of food, the rattling of mugs, the general hum, and general movement, it was (hardly possible at first to distinguish any face for anything distinctly. By degrees, however, ■ (this legion of wretchedness and soiled humanity resolved itself into two hundred or so distinct rows, as clear and defined as the lines in a (daily newspaper. Out of the two thousand ■guests there were 101 old men women, 271 middle-aged men and 387 women, 147 youths, 123 girls, and 800 children. The ■ sexes were divided, the males occupying the ,seats to the right-hand side of the hall, the females those to the left, the boys and girls being" in possession of the foremost forms. I 1 can scarcely call to mind out of my many Drill Hall experiences having ever seen so .motley an assemblage. Scarcely a black coat .and not one vestige of shirt or collar was visible out of the whole mass, whilst from an ordinary survey of heads I should say that, for .at least a month, comb and brush had been i 'considered by the majority a superfluity. Among the old men I saw many white bearded, with faces that, save for the unmistakable'stamp which drink and debauchery '■ (invariably set there, might have sat for a ■ portrait by -Rembrandt. One old man, who might from his features have passed as "twin brother to Carlyle, sat devouring the welcome cheer. He was; as I learned subsequently, a weaver by trade, and had once held his head up with the best of his class. Intemperance, however, had done its work. At the age of seventy, bereft_ of ■friends, children, and relatives, he was subsisting chiefly on two shillings per week received from the Board. There were scores of such men present, some so miserable and feeble they had to be supported, others bent almost double with the weight of years and infirmity. They came, so I was told, regularly to the breakfast, and were really benefiting by the care and "kindness bestowed on their temporal and spiritual wants. A few seats off sat a man who not long since figured conspicuously in the newspaper columns. through having swallowed a quantity of carbolic acid in mistake for spirituous liquor, and strange to say without the draught proving fatal. His little motherless child,a bright-eyed,dirty-faced,neatly-clad . girl; Was there. The child had never been to school, could'neither read nor spell her own name, She was fourteen years of age. The father : was willing enough to send her to school, but the; mother, who had lately died . from the effects Of dropsy brought on by in"temperance, had refused to let. her go, saying . she could not spare' her from the house. The child in the meantime has been up to the pre- - sent- tinje entirely; overlooked b.y the School Board. Jnst before the Carlyle-faced man I i saw n tiny little fellow, who was dressed in a . ragged jacket, drawn over what seemed to be 1 ;its father’s fustian jacket. The boy, -it 'appeared, had tried: almost every, species of . itinerant trade, and had sold evening papers 'since he was six years old. His mother worked in a rag-atoie, he said. , She: was,' according to -the boy’s account, a kind, woman enough, i bought him boots; when he .. wanted them, and pawned ;them the following day to procure drink. •