Knots Untied; Or, Ways and By-ways in the Hidden Life of American DetectivesMcWatters, George S.
General
Knots Untied; Or, Ways and By-ways in the Hidden Life of American Detectives
McWatters, George S.
Detectives
Officer McWatters, whose urbanity and politeness is proverbial, was
accosted yesterday forenoon, by a young man who had just stepped off of
the Fall River boat, who inquired of him to know the way to the Park.
"What park?" politely queried the officer.
"O, I don't know,--any park where I can sit down a while, and see
something of New York!"
"Better take a stage and go to Union Park. Everything clean, quiet, and
orderly."
The officer assisted the young man into the stage, which soon sat him
down in Union Park. The Park never looked lovelier. Children and drums,
nurses and baby-wagons, small boys and fire-crackers, lovely maidens
with books of poesy, the water-basin and the flowing fountain, the
green trees and the luxuriant shade, all were but parts of a perfect
whole, which Mr. Jasper Gray, the young man in question, enjoyed hugely.
Mr. Gray is a native of that enterprising village known as Fall River,
and he had come to New York to see the sights. The senior Gray had
warned him to look out for the "sharks;" and with a promise that he
would do so, and about one hundred and sixty dollars in his pocket, the
young man left his home, to sojourn several weeks in and about the
Metropolis. Mr. Gray's idea of "sharks" was, that of some huge
braggadocio, who would fiercely assault him late at night, demand his
money or his life, or assume some other equally disagreeable mode of
placing him in a dilemma. He had no idea that under the bright sun of
midday, and in the grateful shade of the trees of a public square, the
shark was looking and watching for a victim; but so it was.
As he cast his eye towards the fountain, his gaze rested upon a little
child playing on the greensward, now rolling on the grass, and again
approaching dangerously near the water's edge. Once thinking that the
child might fall in, he sprang from his seat, and caught the little
fellow by the arm, and delivered him into the hands of his nurse. A few
moments after this occurrence an elegantly-dressed young lady came up
to the seat upon which he was sitting, and begged leave to thank him
for having so kindly cared for her little brother, whom, she declared,
he had saved from falling into the water.
"Nurse has gone home with the darling, now; but I could not feel to
leave you without expressing my gratitude for your kindness," said the
lady, whose eyes shone with brilliancy through the thin gauze veil,
filling Mr. Jasper Gray with the most undefinable feelings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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