Two Travelers | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 9, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 38.

Two Travelers.

Of course you have all heard of Castle Garden, in New York. Now, when you say "garden" you think of neatly-made paths, and bright flowers nodding at you as you pass, and bees and butterflies flying from flower to flower. How disappointed you would be when you looked at Castle Garden! It is a shabby building, and such a queer shape—round—built on the Battery. Years ago it was a fort; afterward it was put to various uses. A reception was given to General Lafayette in this building, and it was here the great singer, Jennie Lind, sang when she came to New York. Now the immigrants—that is, the poor people who come in big ships from Europe and other foreign countries—are landed there. You know these people have no homes in this country, and some of them have no friends.

There are people authorized to care for them and send them where they want to go. Sometimes they expect to buy land and build houses out West, and support themselves by working on farms. Sometimes they come here and stay in Castle Garden until they are hired to work by some one. Everything is done to make them comfortable. But the most surprising immigrants who come to this country are the little children who come all alone; that is, without father or mother or big brothers or sisters to look after them.

The parents of these children have not money enough to pay the fare for themselves and for their children, so they leave their children at their old homes with the grandmother or some other relative, and then they come to this country, and earn money enough to make a home and pay the passage of the children.

When the relatives in Europe get the letters telling when and how to send the children, they tie a card on the children's neck, on which is written the address of the new home, take them to the ship, and they sail for the strange country, and when they land sometimes the father or mother meets them at Castle Garden. You can just imagine how the children feel when they meet their father and mother.

But sometimes when they land at New York they have only gone part of the journey to their home. Last week two children, a brother and sister, landed at Castle Garden. The boy was ten years old and the girl was four. Their father and mother had come to this country, and left these children at their old home in Ireland, three years ago, and only now had a place to shelter them, out in Dakota. These children stood side by side in the crowd; their faces were not very clean, and they looked very frightened; such a hurry and such pushing and scolding were enough to frighten big folks. Not one familiar face! It was very warm; the room they were in was not over-clean, and every one was too busy to notice the two little children who huddled together close to the wall.

After a while the crowd was not so great, and a man discovered these two homesick, frightened children. They did not know where they were going, but he looked at the card and put them on the boat that would take them to the cars. Before you read this, no doubt these two little ones have reached the little home out in Dakota. How glad they are to get there you can well imagine. Three years away from their mother! Think of it. While you are reading this, I think that little girl is in her mother's lap, and the boy sits on the door-step beside his father, telling all the things that happened on that long journey from Ireland to Dakota.—Sel.