Williamsburgh Word Portraits, No. 10

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WILLIAMSBURGH WORD PORTRAITS.

By Apelles—No. 10.

Some of my readers doubtless imagine that my series of sketches had come to an end, as they have not heard from me for several weeks; but the fact is that a brief absence from the city, and a multiplicity of other engagements, have hitherto prevented me from continuing my artistic efforts.

PORTRAIT No. 25

Being gifted with a largely developed bump of veneration, I always endeavor to cultivate a feeling of respect for those who sit in high places, and exercise authority in the community. I admit that very often I find it difficult to reconcile the respect I wish to feel for an occupant of a public position, with the knowledge I may chance to have of the man himself; but in the present instance I rejoice to be able to say that the man honors his office quite as much as office can honor him. He sits on the bench of justice daily in our midst, and judiciously mingles the suaviter in modo with the fortiter in re in the discharge of his duties. Careful and patient in the investigation of the disputed questions relating to person and property which come before him; attentive and courteous to the extremist verge of leniency, to suitors however humble, complaints however trivial, and counsel however troublesome, he commands the respect as well as regard of all who have business to transact with him, by his firmness in dealing with offenders of every grade. Add to this that he possesses the faculty, now so rare, of understanding the law he sits to administer, and it will not be wondered at that his official conduct has given general satisfaction to his constituents, and has tended very materially to the repression of rowdyism, and the reputation the Eastern District now enjoys of an exemplary locality.

PORTRAIT No. 26

The sovereign people do not always choose the fittest man to perform the several functions of public business. Sometimes they place an illiterate man in a position requiring education and scholastic accomplishments; occasionally they vest executive power in a man of little force of will, or place in a position requiring the utmost disinterestedness, a man of notorious self seeking aims. In their selection of an officer to administer their public charities, however, the people of the Eastern District have again and again exhibited the utmost wisdom, by retaining in that duty an individual whose kindness of heart and genuine sympathy with suffering, makes his work to him a labor of love; while his rigid integrity forms an ample guarantee against any abuse of his powers, or misapplication of the revenues of which he is entrusted with the disbursal. Tall, portly, good-humored in feature as in fact, my subject is known, admired, and respected by all his fellow citizens. In the county towns as well as in the city, everyone concurs in speaking well of him. When last elected he was solitary and alone of his party—the rest were all left far behind—but even the bitter animosity is a partisanship, engendered by presidential elections, were assuaged by the general esteem felt for him. I understand he thinks of declining his office at the close of the present term. Though among the promised candidates for the succession, is one for whom I cherish the highest respect, I would yet be loth to see my present subject vacate the position he has filled so long, so wisely and so well.

PORTRAIT No. 27

There is no mistaking in the man of whom I now write, the leading characteristics of an impulsive, energetic, go-a-head disposition. Middle height, slim, dark complexioned, clear voice and piercing eye, it surprises no one who has ever seen him to learn that, though yet young, he has made for himself, without penuriousness or rapacity, a very large fortune, and now owns a large establishment in connection with the heaviest of the many branches of manufacture carried on in Williamsburg. My subject is one of the few men who have gone deeply into politics without being drawn into an absorbing passion for that game of chance. He followed it long enough and earnestly enough to acquire a leading position in his party, who elected him to one of the most responsible and lucrative offices in the county.—Then he had the good sense to withdraw, instead of remaining as too many do on tenter hooks, waiting for another nomination. Latterly he has acted with the reform wing of his party, when he has acted at all. He is too high spirited and honest to go it blind with any set of men, especially if they are a bad set. His political convictions are as strong as anybody’s, and no one knows better how to forcibly express and use fully promote them; but for all that he will not swallow every slippery man and every dubious measure that happens to be labelled regular. In a word, he is my model of what an intelligent citizen’s conduct should be, in matters political.

PORTRAIT No. 28

The highest compliment that can be paid to any man, is to say that he does his duty (if it be an important one) better than any one else could do it. This is admittedly the case with the gentleman to whom I now refer. He holds an important position under the city government—one which requires, almost beyond any other, intelligence, care and accuracy; and so well are its duties performed that year after year the utmost heat even of opposing partizanships subsides at the mention of the office which he fills. ”We can’t get along without him,” is the observation of those whose party feelings would prompt them to oppose him. Without being a lawyer, he knows more law than three fourths of the profession; never known to preside in a meeting, he is perfectly infallible on those complex labyrinths of entanglement, rules of debate and points of order; hardly ever making a speech, he is known to possess every quality of a finished speaker; seldom, latterly, writing for the press, he yet retains the deserved reputation of a first-class editor. When in his public seat, one minute the spectator hears a broken, disjointed, ungrammatical set of resolutions from somebody who hardly knows himself what his resolve is, and in the very next breath my subject repeats in clear phrase an elegant diction, yet apparently scarcely a verbal change, exactly what the mover now thinks he meant to propose. The rambling incoherent paragraph has become intelligible, and the business may progress without a moment’s hindrance being required to correct blunders. If the reader will only compare the doings of the one Brooklyn legislative body with those of the two of New York, he will see at once how much more rapidly, even in the present talkative year of grace, business is despatched, here than there; and if he desires to know the reason why, let him attend at the Hall some Monday evening as a spectator, and notice how quickly but infallibly each man’s idea is divined, penned, recorded, and how soon and clearly the sense of the house is ascertained. Even the versatile and accomplished E. O. Perrin¹ never equaled my subject as a manager and facilitator of legislative business. But this, though his most usual, is his least honorable merit. His literary abilities, and occasional indefatigable industry, are not so widely celebrated in the city as a special fitness for his ordinary duties; but the city owes to him the authorship of all the best of her public documents and archives for years past. He has in an emphatic degree, the lawyer-faculty of grasping the points of a subject and presenting them in unanswerable cogency and unmistakable simplicity. Where he is, he is the right man in the right place. It seemed a pity in the first place to spoil a good editor by putting him there, but in truth nobody is fit for the place but one who combines, as he does, the editorial aptitude with the stenographic accomplishment.

FINIS.

With the above brief sketches I conclude the series. There are many other good men in the Burgh, but they are mostly in private life, from the recesses of which I have neither right nor inclination to drag them. In all the sketches I have “set down naught in malice,” and hence in taking leave of my readers, I have nothing to regret or retract.

APELLES.

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