Part 5

"As so much has been said in the papers, from time to time, about 'Pfaff's,' it may be well to state that the name is descriptive, simply, of a 'restaurant and lager bier saloon,' kept at No. 647 Broadway, by a Teuton of that name, and which, partly from its central position, and partly from the excellence of its fare, has been such a favorite resort, for several years, for artists, literateurs, actors, managers, editors, critics, politicians, and other public characters, as to have become quite famous. It is not, as has been often reported, the rendezvous of a particular clique or club of Bohemians (whatever they may be), but simply a general and convenient meeting-place for cultivated men, and one where, almost any evening, you may meet representatives of nearly every branch of literature and art, assembled, not by appointment, nor from habit even, but 'met by chance, the usual way.' Among the literary men whom we have met there from time to time, during the last three or four years, may be mentioned Walt Whitman, Aldrich, Winter, Stoddard, Bayard Taylor, W. Ross Wallace, W. D. Howells, Frank Otterson, Charles Dawson Shanly, W. H. Fry, Edward Howland, Charles Seymour, 'Doesticks,' 'Artemus Ward,' 'Figaro,' T. C. Evans, E. C. Stedman, Charles F. Briggs, E. G. P. Wilkins, Charles Gayler, J. V. Sears, Harry Neill, E. H. House, Frank Wood, C. Burkhardt, Rosenberg, A. F. Banks, 'Walter Barret,' George Arnold, Charles D. Gardette, 'Howard of the Times,' and Thad. Glover; among artists, Stillman, Palmer, Launt, Thompson, Cafferty, G. H. Hall, Shattuck, Innis, Sewell, Henessy, Loop, Avery, Frank Howland, Homer Martin, Eastman Johnson, Bierstadt, Van Beest, Hitchings, Bellew, Mullen, Anthony, Eytinge, Nast, Baker, Sontag, Boughton, Rowse; and of other well-known characters, Ullman, Strakosch, Maretzek, Grau, Stigelli, Mollenbaur, H. L. Bateman, Nixon, Dolly Davenport, Davidge, Young, Fisher, Floyd, Reynolds, Stuart, Moss, Chanfrau, Mason, the Hanlons, Officer McWatters, J. Augustus Page, Gill Davis, Schauss, Seitz, Brisbane, Dr. Wainwright, etc., etc., including a good number of politicians, and that large class of people, called Germans, without end."

Of this goodly host, the gifted Wilkins; Fry, the erudite, then so distinguished in the editorial and musical world; Arnold, the genial young essayist, poet, and humorist; "Artemus Ward," and perhaps others, long since made their last visit to Pfaff's--their lights of life going out in the peaceful darkness of death, while "their literary torches burn on,"--"stars which gleam forever."

And other of these,--Whitman, Stedman, Howells, Aldrich, and Edward Howland, for especial example--(the last four being, in 1862, of the very youngest of the above array), and Bierstadt, Shattuck, etc., have climbed to the top of Parnassian heights, won bright and solid victories in the field of prose as essayists, historians, etc., or transferred nature to the canvas with that beauty and sublimity of artistic truthfulness which have commanded for them the admiration of the world.

It is with these men, and others of equal order of intellectual and social gifts, that Officer McWatters has passed most of his leisure hours for many years; thus keeping his genial nature and bright intelligence free from the corrosion and canker which eat into the moral and intellectual vitals of the mere business man; and preserving himself physically, too, fresh and buoyant as youth itself. The great number of personal souvenirs which Officer McWatters' author friends have presented him, in the shape of copies of their respective works, constitute quite a "library" in themselves,--a pleasing recognition, grateful to himself and his family, of the excellent social merits, intellect, and moral worth of the man and the officer.

OFFICER MCWATTERS AS THE GOOD SAMARITAN.

Whatever are our subject's merits otherwise, as a man and an officer, and extreme though was his patriotic zeal during the late civil war, and to which he gave practical expression in the wisest and noblest ways, all these has he eclipsed, and rendered comparatively unworthy of note, by his career since the war as a Good Samaritan, a practical "Home Missionary" (if it be not derogatory to apply to him a designation, however kindly, which usually signifies but little more than a sectarian proselyter of one school or another). Always interested in social problems, Officer McWatters is too intelligent not to fully understand that the fragmentary reforms and the ordinary great charities of the times can never subdue the evils which his heart would abate and banish from society forever. Indeed, it is the opinion of the writer, (however little this may accord with Officer McWatters' views, or however opposed he may be to so radical sentiments, for herein the writer speaks for himself and no one else), that the availability of charity towards abolishing evil is but pitiable at best. Giving the beggar an old coat, only to be called on by some other beggar for a like coat, and never seeking to abolish beggary and its attendant sufferings by some judicious means of abolishing beggars themselves, by destroying the causes which create them, is unscientific, paltry, and in every way unwise at best.

It is only about nineteen hundred years since the advent of Christianity; and perhaps not over two hundred and fifty millions of people at the present time profess to be Christians, and belong to some of the symbolized divisions of the church, while may be not over three hundred millions more profess to be Christians in spirit; and not much of good could well be expected to grow up in so short a time, and with so few advocates to encourage it; yet the writer confesses that, in some of his weaker moods, he is astonished after all that something has not been done by Christian people to abolish the proximate and fruitful cause of nearly all the crimes and sufferings, namely, poverty. The sufferings of the poor in New York, for example, are terrible to contemplate; and the much-boasted great charities of the metropolis are directed only to temporary relief of the sufferers. This is their highest aspiration even. They proclaim no desire to do more, at best, than to smooth the bed of the sick, and procure "places" for children (to grow up and work for others in), or situations for this woman or that poor man out of employment.

The right of these children and these poor men and women to live at all, and the duty of society to guarantee to the individual the enjoyment of that right, are wholly ignored by them. Year after year they perform their patchwork charities with a patience which would be commendable in the pursuit of science, and which, while it astonishes the writer at its stupidity, nevertheless commands from him, as he cheerfully confesses, a sort of respect, if not admiration; for many of these charity-doers are really the best of people at heart, and would doubtless, if they knew how, do better, act more wisely. But they are ignorant of better means than they use; and, in fact, it has never occurred to them that better and wiser means ought to be, or could be taken than those they employ, to assuage human suffering.

With his study and understanding of sociology, Officer McWatters must necessarily see, we think, and painfully feel, how meagre and pitiful are the amends which charity makes to those victims whom society has robbed of their rights; and his sense of this must constantly operate to weaken his courage and chill his enthusiasm in the cause of petty or "patchwork" charities. Yet withal so abundant is his good nature, so sensitive his sympathies, that years do not seem to abate his zeal therein at all; and here is the wonder. He keeps on in his good works, though the institutions of society multiply the sufferings he would abate, and bring to his door ten new sufferers _because_ he has just aided one old one. As long as such souls as McWatters' continue doing their good deeds, so long will the rapacious and extortionate thank them, and continue to create victims for them to practise their humanity upon. The landlord, whose tenant is poor and sick, is very grateful, of course, to the "charitable society" which helps his tenant to pay the rent; and it is a question with the writer, sometimes, if it were not better that the kind and tender-hearted benefactors of the poor were less numerous; for if the poor were goaded on by suffering a little further, they might, dispelling the mists of ever-fallacious "hope" from before their eyes, come to see their rights, and demand them.

It is to the advantage of the master to feed his chattel-slave sufficiently well to keep him in good strength for work. Charity, under direction of the masters in society, feeds the working classes only up to the point of usefulness as wages-slaves. It is cheaper for a given present time to keep a poor man in a working condition than it is to let him starve to death, and so incur the expense of burying him. That expresses the _morale_ of the master-classes' "consideration" of the subject-classes; and here in the United States the "tender love" of the strong for the weak is just as marked as in other lands, perhaps; but, alas! no more so, notwithstanding our boasted love of "liberty and right."

But we remarked that Officer McWatters must understand all this, and yet pursues his constant course of charities. Not for the wisdom (or the lack of it, as the case may be) which prompts or permits him to do the thousand acts of benevolence for which he is noted, is it that he commands so much of our admiration, but for that tireless sympathy and wondrous vitality of benevolence (so to characterize it) which ever bestir him, notwithstanding his clear understanding that he will, and can alone, only mitigate effects, and not cure causes; that he is "carrying coals to Newcastle" all the while, or is putting one brick on a pile, only to see a dozen fall therefrom; and this, though he repeats it day after day.

As we have before remarked, Officer McWatters is not a rich man, save in his own good nature and the affection of his multitudinous friends; and _his_ charities mean something to his purse, drawing from it constantly whatever he can find time or opportunity to place there; for, if the writer is correctly informed, Officer McWatters has never received a cent for his multifarious labors in connection with any of the several organized charities to which he is attached. As a member of the Metropolitan Police he received his salary, rendering therefor his full duty; and this was all he had to support himself and family upon; and that was constantly depleted by his benevolence, as we have remarked before. In view of these facts, Officer McWatters is elevated, in our esteem, to the rank of the Howards, and the other marked philanthropists of the world.

MCWATTERS AND THE SOLDIERS.

During the late civil war, as we have said, Officer McWatters took a deep and patriotic interest in the conflict. This was manifested in many ways, particularly towards the soldiers and their families; and he has not forgotten them since. Whatever the reader may think of a man who in this age allows himself to go deliberately into a contest, the avowed purpose of which is to maim and kill his fellow-men, for any cause; or what he may think of that order of society which compels a man to enlist in a cause of cruelty and blood (as hosts of men were driven into the rebel ranks at the point of the bayonet, or by conscription, or want of something else to do, however remonstrating), ought to have but little bearing upon the case of the veteran soldier now.

Our Northern soldiers went to the war with the assurance of the public press, and the declaration of hundreds of thousands of those who remained at home, but who gathered in crowds ("to see the soldiers _off_") at the places of departure, that they should, on their return, receive the gratitude of those for whom they fought. Promises were abundant, and the poor, confiding fellows for the most part believed them, and on the battle-field found consolation for their hardships and dangers in the love of those they had left behind, and which, poured forth in unstinted measure on their return, was to be their "good and abundant reward." Poor fellows! they have learned, for the most part, the value of their countrymen's love; they have learned how priceless is the glory of an arm or a leg lost, since it secures for them, who only had precarious homes before, a permanent home in the poor-house, or has led them to the due consideration of the virtue of economy; the estimable and superior value of rags over the whole coats they used to wear; of temperance in eating, and other like virtues. Very few care for the "veteran soldier" now, and his family is left to starve with those of other paupers, or with those of the imprisoned criminal. This is the sad truth; and were another civil war to arise to-day, probably but very few of the old rank and file, who are still strong and able, would muster around the standard again, but would generously suggest to those who remained at home before, that they might now win all the victories, and enjoy all the glory.

But there are a few in the community who have not forgotten the maimed veterans and their suffering families; and chief among these few is Officer McWatters; for we hazard nothing in saying, that, all things considered, there cannot be found another person, male or female, in the whole land, who has done more for the poor soldiers and their families than he. He seems to be impelled in his constant care for them by what amounts to almost a generous frenzy, and which might so be denominated were it not that his deeds in their behalf are always directed by wisdom; it is a passion, at least, with him; the poetry of his current life.

LADIES' UNION RELIEF ASSOCIATION.

Officer McWatters is an active member of several charitable organizations; but that under which the greater share of his benevolent deeds have been done for the last five or six years during which he has been connected with it, is the Ladies' Union Relief Association. This is an organization, under the directorship of several benevolent ladies of distinguished social position in New York, such as the wives of Messrs. Marshall O. Roberts, Ex-Mayor Havemeyer, Dr. Joseph Worster, Henry Dwight, J. A. Kennedy (President), William E. Churchill, etc., with Miss Evelina S. Hamilton, as Corresponding Secretary, Miss Madeline McKibben, Recording Secretary, and Miss Marianna Hale, Treasurer of the Association. This organization has an advisory board, composed of Generals Dix, Van Vliet, Butler, Rev. Drs. Chapin and Thompson, Hon. W. F. Havemeyer, Drs. Herrick and Worster, Messrs. Theodore Roosevelt, George Bliss, Jr., William E. Dodge, Jr., and many other distinguished gentlemen. But the chief and most active man of the board is our subject, Officer George S. McWatters, with whom, and his constant aid, this benevolent Association would not willingly part.

The Ladies' Union Relief Association undertake to assist the sick and disabled veteran soldiers and their families, and the families of deceased soldiers; and their self-imposed duties are very onerous, and a vast amount of charitable work do they, visiting the sick and taking to them the necessaries of life, paying their rents, clothing the children; finding places of employment for the ex-soldier, or his widow, or family; furnishing this or that one means of transportation to the far West, for example, when offered a home there with some relative, etc., etc. These duties are constant. The field is always a large one; and in a season like that of 1870-71, when business is dull, and employment is scarce, the poor of New York suffer extremely. It is in such a season that the relations of poverty to the wealth which its labors have created (for the workers are ever the poor), is seen in painful relief upon the face of society.

In the performance of his voluntarily assumed duties under this Association, Officer McWatters found nearly all his time, aside from that strictly required by his official duties, occupied, nights as well as days. At the police headquarters, where he held a detailed position, the poor and suffering flocked to him during the day for advice and succor; and when off duty as a policeman, he gave his time to visiting and aiding them in their squalid homes.

The Ex-Superintendent Kennedy cordially seconded Officer McWatters in his benevolent work, and gave him every facility for receiving the poor at the police office. In this way he was enabled, while fulfilling his duties as a policeman, to gratify his heart with kindly attention to the poor. But eventually Superintendent Kennedy was superseded by Mr. Jourdan. Jourdan was, it would appear, an unfeeling man. He refused to let the soldiers visit the headquarters in search of Officer McWatters, and declared that they were "dirty, and smelled bad," and that he would no longer suffer them to come. Thus Officer McWatters' mendicant clientage was prohibited consulting with him during the hours of police duty, and he felt that his dearest, most cherished "occupation," was almost "gone." His sphere of pleasant, though onerous duties, was limited, and he fretted under the restraint of the rule which prevented the poor to approach him--a man whom the Rev. Dr. Bellows declares, when referring to the poor soldiers, to be "one of their few steady, laborious, and judicious benefactors."

But death came, and laid Superintendent Jourdan in the grave--the common earth--as lowly as the graves of the "dirty," poor soldiers whom he despised. It is a significant fact that this man Jourdan's remains were followed to the tomb by many distinguished citizens of New York,--politicians, men of wealth and professional good standing, and others. But perhaps it is not so strange after all that he should have been so honored in New York, for Fernando Wood has been mayor of the city; and many who have grown rich by political thieving are kept in office, and Jim Fisk, Jr., is not only suffered to live within the city limits, but has been elected to the post of colonel of the Ninth Regiment, and is actually extolled by great numbers of the people. Crime is no great stain to any man in New York if he but have money, or is in the "line" of making it fast. The city's moral worth reposes, for the most part now, with the few members of the churches who are what they profess to be, and with the benevolent and Christian women,--comparatively few in number,--like those of the Ladies' Union Relief Association, and the few Howards, whose best representative is Officer McWatters.

Jourdan's death, however, did not abate the unjust rule he had made, forbidding the poor to seek their friends at the headquarters of the police, and Officer McWatters, unwilling longer to follow for a livelihood a calling by which he was prevented from honoring the dictates of his heart by doing all which he might do in some other vocation for the poor soldiers and their families, determined on resigning his post. While he was casting about for such a position, some of his friends, among whom were Rev. Dr. Bellows, President of the United States Sanitary Commission (and who cheerfully says of Officer McWatters, "The evidence is overwhelming that few private persons have given so much time and effectual aid to the friendless class as he"), Wm. Cullen Bryant, and other gentlemen of high character; and the ladies of the Relief Association, who were unwilling to part with his invaluable coöperation, sought, for Officer McWatters, a place in the custom-house, where the lingering sway of no heartless Jourdan would oppress him. Officer McWatters' desire being made known to Collector Murphy, he, be it said to his honor, immediately and generously offered him a situation which would enable him to earn his living, and continue his benevolent work; and on the 17th of October, 1870, Officer McWatters tendered the resignation of his place as policeman to the Commissioners, by the following letter, a copy of which we take from the New York Dispatch of the 23d of that month:--

"NEW YORK, October 17, 1870.

"_To the Hon. Board of Police Commissioners of New York._

"GENTLEMEN: I beg respectfully to offer my resignation as a patrol policeman, the same to take effect on Tuesday, October 18, 1870.

"This step has been rendered necessary for the following reasons: I have been prohibited by your representative, the late Superintendent, from employing my spare time in the fulfilment of a duty which, in common with all good citizens, I owe to the defenders of our country, the sick and disabled soldiers, and to the widows and orphans of those who perished in the late war; and being determined to fulfil that duty, I have obtained employment elsewhere, under circumstances that will enable me to continue to assist and advise these poor people.

"Respectfully asking your acceptance of my resignation, I remain, gentlemen, yours, &c.,

"GEORGE S. MCWATTERS."

The public journals of the times made most complimentary allusion to Officer McWatters when noticing his withdrawal from the police force and acceptance of a post in the custom-house. They spoke of him--but perhaps it were well to let some of them "speak for themselves." We reproduce here the following (all we have space for in this article) from the New York Evening Post and the Daily Times. The former remarked thus:--

"The resignation of George S. McWatters deprives the police force of one of its most faithful and efficient members; but, on the other hand, it enables Mr. McWatters to continue his benevolent and gratuitous services in behalf of the wounded soldiers, and the widows and orphans of those who fell during the late war. Mr. McWatters proposes to open an office, under the auspices of the Ladies' Union Relief Association, and of General Butler, in his capacity of President of the Board of Managers of the National Homes for Disabled Soldiers, where, at certain hours each day, he can be consulted, and will offer relief and assistance. There is now no place in this city where this class of persons can get advice without paying roundly for it, and running the danger of falling into the hands of unprincipled claim agents. Mr. McWatters intends to give his service gratuitously in this good cause, as he has been doing for the last five or six years. He is now filling an office in the custom-house, and Collector Murphy has shown his discriminating good sense in making the appointment."

The Times said:--

"The appointment of Mr. George S. McWatters to the position of storekeeper, under the New York custom-house, was most judicious, and will be heartily approved by those who are familiar with the man and his good deeds. He has been connected with the police department of the city for the past twelve years, and never had a charge preferred against him in all that time. Since the war, in addition to his police duties, he has been an indefatigable worker for the interests of sick and disabled soldiers, and the families of those who died in battle. Hundreds of cases have been investigated by him, and relief obtained for the unfortunate in scores of instances. For these services Mr. McWatters received no remuneration whatever, save the gratitude of those who were the object of his beneficence. His merits were recognized by the collector, and hence the offer of an appointment, which was accepted a few days after."