Knots untied, or, Ways and by-ways in the hidden life of American detectives / By Officer George S. McWatters.

  • McWatters, George S.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Knots untied, or, Ways and by-ways in the hidden life of American detectives / By Officer George S. McWatters. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    and crime, and their causes, and the means of tueir depletion, and final extinction also (as I firmly believe) in the good time coming, when Science shall have ripened the paltry and distracted civilization of the present into that enlightenment in which alone the race should be con- tented to live,—in which only, in truth, they can be fully content with existence,—-and which the now subject classes could, if they were wise enough to know their rights and their power, command in concert, for themselves, and the ruling classes as well. And these partial friends of mine have thought I might do some good, and that I ought to, however little it may prove, to the cause of human happiness,—in the intent thereby of enlarging the security of the inno- cent from the machinations of the depraved,—by the detail of certain wily offences against the law and good order of society, while demon- strating therein how sure of final discoveiy and punishment are the criminally vicious, however crafty and subtle, in these days, when the art of police detection has become almost an .exact science. Authors are sometimes sensitive (I believe), about the reception which they, by their works, may meet with at the hands of the public; and not seldom do they, in more or less ingenious ways, attempt to cajole their readers, through well-studied prefaces, into a prejudicedly favora- ble mood regai'ding the body of their books. Perhaj^s mine is a singu- larly good fortune, in that my partial and importuning friends before alluded to, have given me consoling courage to go forward and pub- lish what they are so kind as to be pleased with, by the assurance that they will take upon themselves, and patiently bear, all the severe criti- cism, the curses, the wanton blows, etc., wliicli may be aimed at me by hypercritical critics, or by vexed and wi-athful readers ; while I shall be left to enjoy, unalloyed, all the blessings with which the rest of the public may be pleased to favor me. I regarded this as so excellent an expression of human [e] goodness upon the part of these my friends, that I consented to honor it, by sub- mission to their will. Hence these tales, in their printed form,— design^ 1 at first to beguile an hour for particular friends in the read- ing, as the same had beguiled many long hours for me in the writing,— and not primarily intended to be put into the form of a book. If any good to the world accrues from their publication, through the instruction which they may afford to some, perhaps; or by their possibly enlarging the scope of the reader's charity for the erring, or in any way, I shall be gratified; and so (it is but fair in me to add this, for they are human, and sensitive to the joys which a good done brings)—and so, to repeat, will also be my aforesaid partial, good friends. George S. McWatteks.