The asylums, as they are at present ordered, cannot meet cases like these; but they merit help, and should have it in some fashion. The Ladies' Union Relief Association does much to keep a great number off the street who would otherwise present much more disagreeable pictures than the organ-grinders to the eyes of your sensitive correspondent; but their means are limited. They cannot reach all who need. Until the country has reached out her helping hand to all to whom she owes assistance as a right, it is in bad taste to find fault with the mode in which the disabled soldier tries to earn a living for his family.
McWatters.
TEN DOLLARS A MONTH: A STORY OF GRIEF AND JOY.
It is a painful comment upon the state of society, or the character of our civilization, that our most cherished literature, both of poetry and prose, has its origin in human woes and wrongs. "Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn." Dickens, with all his wealth of genius, so much prized, would have found no use for it in a decent world, unless, perchance, it might have shone as brightly upon the face of Joy, as it beamed pathetically upon the tortured visage of Misery. Hood, in his immortal "Song of the Shirt," and the "Bridge of Sighs," and in many other of his verse; Tennyson, in the best of his poems; Mrs. Browning, with her vast power of thought and feeling, to say nothing of many other great writers of the past and present; our own blessed poet Whittier, etc., have given us their noblest works with pens dipped in human tears, or sharpened by human sufferings. So, too, of the great good deeds of the other philanthropists—the Howards, the Nightingales, the McWatterses. They could only have had their origin in the wrongs which man does to his fellow-man; in the outrages which the tyrant classes do to the weaker; in the riot of wars for governmental supremacy; in the sufferings of the outraged, trampled into the dust by the powerful robbers of society in their mad greed for wealth, or cheated by pious and talented hypocrites out of their moral as well as physical rights.
Society should be so ordered, as it might readily be, that all the pathetic literature now so much cherished, would be obnoxious to us, as belonging to a state of things which once existed, but which all were anxious to forget; when only the songs of joy should find birth, and when the basilar principles of Christianity should be practically recognized, and everywhere expressed in our institutions, or organic social life. But this we cannot hope for till superstition shall be done away with, the "money-changers" driven from the porches of our "temples;" the poor and ignorant made aware of their rights, and earnest in claiming them; and the tyrant classes come to learn the falsity of their chief "motto," namely, that 'tis "better to rule in hell than serve in heaven."
We had thought to give in the foregoing Biographical Notes some touching instances of the experiences of the good women of the "Ladies' Union Relief Association" and Officer McWatters, in their noble work of succoring the needy, and binding up the wounds of the suffering. We have before us, furnished by the kindness of a friend, a partial record of the Association's deeds (never intended for publication), freighted with notes of bitter sorrows which they have assuaged, and which, written out, would fill pathetic volumes; but we have no space for them here. One, however, so enchains our interest that we cannot forbid ourselves to recite it here, as an exemplary instance, which, if multiplied in his mind by hundreds and thousands, will give the reader something like an adequate understanding of the vast work of kind and tender ministrations which these philanthropists have done, and are constantly doing.
Officer McWatters had two or three times visited a poor, sick, emaciated veteran soldier, by the name of Patrick O'Brien. Of course Patrick could earn nothing for his own support, and depended wholly upon what little his good wife (a comparatively young and fragile woman) could earn by washing and scrubbing, and which she shared with him and their three young children. McWatters was greatly moved by the condition of this family. He saw that the wife could not much longer sustain the burden she was bravely attempting to bear, and finally advised that, as the best thing to be done, the veteran should be sent, at the expense of the Ladies' Union Relief Association, to the Soldiers' Home at Dayton, Ohio. This was consented to by the soldier and his suffering wife, but not without great reluctance. The sympathy of sorrows is tenderly cohesive and sensitive. After leaving with the family some money for their aid, and fixing upon a time, two or three days thereafter, to call with a carriage, and take the soldier to the cars, Officer McWatters bade good day to the family. They expected him to come for the veteran in the night, for the poor man preferred travelling then, as he got no sleep in the night season.
Officer McWatters was so greatly impressed by the innate pride, high spirit, and profound love of the soldier for his family, so deeply reciprocated by them, that he could not bear to see that poor household separated, and at once interested himself to get an allowance for the soldier from the Association, and thus enable him to stay with his family; and he succeeded in procuring ten dollars a month for him, assurance of which he received by letter, just at the time appointed for taking the soldier from his poor home to the cars. He went to bear the good news to the family. It was so late when he got to their miserable little room (for one room, one bed, served them all), that they had retired, thinking that he would not come that night. He rapped, and announced his name, and the poor wife arose from the bed, and admitted him. The poor children awakened before he could announce the good news, and supposing that he had come to take away their father, rushed off from their couch, and sobbing and weeping, implored him not to take their father off, the violence of their and their mother's grief preventing Officer McWatters explaining his present errand for the space of a full minute or two. The poor soldier, moved by his family's grief, had risen from that one bed, and added his prayer to the rest, for something else possible to be done than the sending of him away.
