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Personal Incidents.

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Chancing to turn at this moment to the New York World of March 14, 1861, the writer finds that on the day before Officer McWatters "immersed" himself in the North River, plunging in to rescue a six-years-old boy, who had fallen off the dock. In the Sunday Mercury of April 7, five weeks after the occurrence last mentioned, we find Officer McWatters aiding in the rescue of another boy from a watery grave; and in the Daily Tribune of March 11, 1861, appears the statement of still another rescue from drowning by Officer McWatters, this time of a man, one Captain William Vanname. We might extend, indefinitely, the list of kindred good deeds by Officer McWatters, as gathered from the public journals; but these will serve to show the fact that he was always to be found in the line of his duty. He was frequently saving life, or performing other noble acts.—But we do not intend to dwell in detail upon the professional life of Officer McWatters in his connection with the Metropolitan Police. It is enough, perhaps, to say in general terms, that he fulfilled his duties nobly well; that from Superintendent Kennedy, under whom, for the most part, he served, his official career received the very warmest praise, and that the public press made frequent complimentary mention of him all along the period of about twelve years during which he was a member of the Metropolitan Police force.

We might also refer for further evidence of Officer McWatters' honorable performance of his official duties and high standing in the force to the expressed opinion of the late Superintendent Jourdan. This gentleman's judgment of the merit of an officer's services was, of course, to a great degree worthy of respect. But though the Latin maxim is, "De mortuis nil nisi bonum" (say only good of the dead), we are constrained to feel, that although Superintendent Jourdan's praise had a certain professional merit, yet his moral character was so questionable, that his commendation of Officer McWatters could hardly add to the merit of the latter, while his taste as a gentleman, and his reverence for the honest and the true, would probably induce him to prefer the non-production here of the former's testimony.

Knots Untied; Or, Ways and By-ways in the Hidden Life of American Detectives

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