TEN DOLLARS A MONTH!
At last Officer McWatters succeeded in quelling the passionate storm of wailing and grief for an instant, which he seized to tell them his errand in. It is not probable that pen or pencil could ever do faintest justice to the picture of the gleeful, tearful gratitude which that family exhibited in their sudden revulsion from broken-hearted grief to wild joy, as McWatters finished reading the letter he had received assuring the monthly allowance.
"Ten dollars a month!" A pitiable sum, yet it brought joy to that whole household at that dead hour of night, in the city of mingled sorrows, and vanities, and debaucheries, when hundreds and thousands of the pampered sons and daughters of luxury (worthless members of society) were wasting each more than ten dollars an hour in worse than useless ways,—in riot and "ribald revelry."
The poor man remained with his family nearly two years; when he died, and was buried by the Association. Upon his death his grateful widow wrote to the ladies a letter (a copy of which was taken from the archives of the Association without their special knowledge, it must be confessed, but by "no robbery" after all), and which we think most worthy a place here, in honor of the good ladies whose charities it acknowledges.
"New York, May 3, 1870.
"To the Ladies Union Relief Association:
"Ladies: It is my painful duty to inform you of the death of my husband, Patrick O'Brien. Allow me to express the deep sense of gratitude that I and my children feel towards your Association for the assistance you have generously extended to us during the last two years of his illness. The value of that assistance has been enhanced by the manner of its bestowal. Mr. McWatters, the kind dispenser of your bounty, has smoothed to the grave the pilgrimage of a proud spirit; but for the many delicate assurances he gave my husband that your generous assistance was not charity, but the poor soldier's rightful due, the last years of his life would have been embittered by a sad sense of destitution and dependence.
"My husband served the republic for nearly four years, during which service he was maimed in its defence, and died at last of disease contracted in the service. He could not have borne the thought that he and his little ones were subsisting on the cold charity of the world, and thanks to the delicate tact with which your aid was bestowed his mind was smoothed, and his last days on earth made peaceable.
"Please accept the sincere gratitude and blessings of a soldier's widow and three children.
Mary O'Brien."