the name of John Smith, sometimes James Smith, and sometimes simply Mr. Smith. At other times he is called Roger Brown, Simon White, Bob Johnson, or Tommy Thompson. In short, he has an endless variety of names, under which he passes before the world for so many different persons. The initiated only know, and every body else is gulled.

Peter Funk is a great hand at auctions. He is constantly present, bidding up the goods as though he was determined to buy everything before him. He is well known for bidding higher than any body else; or at all events running up an article to the very highest notch, though he finally lets the opposing bidder take it, merely, as he says, to accommodate him-or, not particularly wanting the article himself, he professes to have bid upon it solely because he thought it, a great pity so fine a piece of goods should go so very far beneath its value.

It is no uncommon thing to see the little fellow attending an auction in his powdered wig, his brown coat, his drab kerseys, as fat as a pig, as sleek as a mole, and smiling with the most happy countenance, as if he were about to make his fortune. It is no uncommon thing, to see him standing near the auctioneer, and exclaiming, as he keeps bobbing his head in token of bidding-"A superb piece of goods! a fine piece of goods! great pity it should go so cheap-I don't want it, but I'll give another twenty-five cents, rather than it should go for nothing." The opposite bidder is probably some novice from the country-some honest Johnny Raw, who is shrewd enough in what he understands, but has never in his life heard of Peter Funk. Seeing so very knowing and respectable a looking man, bilding upon the piece of goods and praising it ap at every nod, he naturally thinks it must be a great bargain, and he is determined to have it, let it cost what it will. The result is, that he gives fifty per cent. more for the article than it is worth, and the auctioneer and Peter Funk are ready to burst with laughter at the prodigious gull they have made of the poor countryman.

By thus running up goods, Peter is of great service to the auctioneers, though he never pays them a cent of money. Indeed it is not his intention to purchase, nor is it that of the auctioneer that he should. Goods nevertheless are frequently struck off to him; and then the salesman cries out the name of Mr. Smith, Mr. Johnson, or some other among the hundred aliases of Peter Funk, as the purchaser. But the goods, on such occasions, are always taken back by the auctioneer, agreeably to a secret understanding between him and Peter.

In a word, Peter Funk is the great under-bidder at all the auctions, and might with no little propriety be styled the under-bidder general. But this sort of characters are both unlawful and unpopular-not to say odious-and hence it becomes necessary for Peter Funk, alias the under-bidder, to have so many aliases to his name, in order that he may not be detected in the underhanded practice of underbidding.

To avoid detection, however, he sometimes resorts to other tricks, among which one is, to act the part of a ventriloquist, and appear to be several different persons, bidding in different places. He has the knack of changing his voice at will, and counterfeiting that of sundry well-known persons; so that goods are sometimes knocked off to gentlemen who have never opened their mouths.

But a very common trick of Peter's, is, to conceal himself in the cellar, from whence, through a convenient hole near the auctioneer, his voice is heard bidding for goods; and nobody, but those in the secret, know from whence the sound pro

But Peter, for the most part, is fond of being seen in some shape or other; and it matters little what, so that he can aid his employers in carrying on a system of deception. He will figure in the shape of a box, bale, or package of goods; he will appear in twenty different places, at the same time, on the shelf of a jobber-sometimes representing a specimen of English, French, or other goods-but being a mere shadow, and nothing else-a phantasma-a show without the substance. In this manner it was, that he often figured in the service of Smirk, Quirk & Co.; and while people were astonished at the prodigious quantity of goods they had in their store, two thirds at least of the show was owing to Peter Funk.

WILLIAM D. GALLAGHER.

WILLIAM D. GALLAGHER, one of the leading writers of the West, was born at Philadelphia in 1808. His father was a native of Ireland, who emigrated to this country after the failure of the Rebellion of 1798, in which he had taken a prominent part on the popular side.

66

After his death his widow, removed in 1816 to Ohio, and settled at Cincinnati, where the son became a printer. As with many others of the same craft, the setting of type was after a while exchanged for the production of "copy." Mr. Gallagher became editor of a literary periodical, the Cincinnati Mirror, which he continued for some time, contributing to its pages from his own pen a number of prose tales and poems, which attracted much attention. enterprise, as is usually the case with pioneer literary efforts, was pecuniarily unsuccessful. During a portion of its career, Mr. Gallagher also edited the Western Literary Journal, published at Cincinnati, a work which closed a brief existence in 1836. He has since been connected with the Hesperian, a publication of a similar character, and of a similarly brief duration.

The

The first production of Mr. Gallagher which attracted general public attention was a poem published anonymously in one of the periodicals, entitled The Wreck of the Hornet. This was reprinted in the first collection of his poems, published in a thin volume in 1835, entitled Errato. The chief poem of this collection is the Penitent, a Metrical Tale.

A second part of Errato appeared in the fall of 1835. It opens with The Conqueror, a poem of six hundred and sixty lines on Napoleon. The third and concluding number of the series appeared in 1837, and contained a narrative poem entitled Cadwallen, the incidents of which are drawn from the Indian conflicts of our frontier history.

The chief portions of Errato are occupied by a number of poems of description and reflection, with a few lyrical pieces interspersed, all of which possess melody, and have won a favorable reception throughout the country.

In 1841 Mr. Gallagher edited a volume entitled Selections from the Poetical Literature of the West, a work peculiarly appropriate for one who had done so much by his labors in behalf of literature, as well as his own contributions to the common stock, to foster and honor the necessarily arduous pursuit of literature in a new country.

AUGUST.

Dust on thy mantle! dust,

Bright Summer, on thy livery of green!

A tarnish, as of rust,

Dims thy late brilliant sheen:

And thy young glories-leaf, and bud, and flowerChange cometh over them with every hour.

Thee hath the August sun

Looked on with hot, and fierce, and brassy face:
And still and lazily run,
Scarce whispering in their pace,
The half-dried rivulets, that lately sent
A shout of gladness up, as on they weat.
Flame-like, the long mid-day-

With not so much of sweet air as hath stirred
The down upon the spray,
Where rests the panting bird,

Dozing away the hot and tedious noon,
With fitful twitter, sadly out of tune.

Seeds in the sultry air,

And gossamer web-work on the sleeping trees! E'en the tall pines, that rear

Their plumes to catch the breeze,

The slightest breeze from the unfreshening west, Partake the general languor, and deep rest.

A soul as dauntless 'mid the storm
Of daily life, a heart as warm
And pure as breast e'er wore.
What then?-Thou art as true a MAN
As moves the human mass among;
As much a part of the Great Plan
That with Creation's dawn began,

As any of the throng.

Who is thine enemy?-the high

In station, or in wealth the chief?
The great, who coldly pass thee by,
With proud step, and averted eye?
Nay! nurse not such belief.

If true unto thyself thou wast,

What were the proud one's scorn to tùce?
A feather, which thou mightest cast
Aside, as idly as the blast

The light leaf from the tree.
No:-uncurbed passions-low desires-
Absence of noble self-respect-
Death, in the breast's consuming fires,
To that high nature which aspires
For ever, till thus checked:
These are thine enemies-thy worst:
They chain thee to thy lowly lot—
Thy labor and thy life accurst.

Oh, stand erect! and from them burst!
And longer suffer not!

Thou art thyself thine enemy!

The great!-what better they than thou
As theirs, is not thy will as free!
Has God with equal favors thee
Neglected to endow?

True, wealth thou hast not: it is but dust!
Nor place: uncertain as the wind!
But that thou hast, which, with thy crust
And water, may despise the lust

Of both-a noble mind.

With this, and passions under ban,

True faith, and holy trust in God,
Thou art the peer of any man.
Look up, then-that thy little span
Of life may be well trod!

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

Is of a Quaker family, established, in spite of old Puritan persecutions, on the banks of the Merrimack, where, at the homestead in the neighborhood of Haverhill, Massachusetts, the poet was born in 1808. Until his eighteenth year he lived at home, working on the farm, writing occasional verses for the Haverhill Gazette, and turning his hand to a little shoemaking, one of the industrial resources with which the New England farmer sometimes ekes out the family subsistence.* Then came two years of town academy learning, when

In a genial article on Mr. Whittier from the pen of Mr. W. S. Thayer in the North American Review for July, 1854, to which we are under obligations for several facts in the present notice, there is this explanation of the shoemaking incident:"Indeed, upon the strength of this, the gentle craft of leather' have laid an especial claim to him as one of their own poets: but we are afraid that mankind would go barefooted if St. Crispin had never had a more devoted disciple. It is characteristic of the thrift of New England farmers to provide extra occupation for a rainy day, and during the winter season, or when the weather is too inclement for out-of-door work, the farmer and his sons turn an honest penny by giving their at tention to some employment equally remunerative. For this purpose they have near the farm-house a small shed stocked with the appropriate implements of labor. But from what we know of Whittier's life, it could not have been long before he violated the Horatian precept which forbids the shoemaker to go beyond his last."

he became editor, in 1829, at Boston, of the American Manufacture, a newspaper in the tariff interest. In 1830 he became editor of the paper which had been conducted by Brainard at Hartford, and when the "Remains" of that poet were published in 1832, he wrote the prefatory memoir. In 1831 appeared, in a small octavo volume, at Hartford, his Legends of New England, which represents a taste early formed by him of the quaint Indian and colonial superstitions of the country, and which his friend Brainard had delicately touched in several of his best poems. The Supernaturalism of New England, which he published in 1847, may be considered a sequel to this volume. There was an early poem published by Whittier, Moll Pitcher, a tale of a witch of Nahant, which may be classed with these productions, rather poetical essays in prose and verse on a favorite subject than, strictly speaking, poetical creations.

Kindred in growth to these, was his Indian story, Mogg Megone, which appeared in 1836, and has its name from a leader among the Saco Indians in the war of 1677. It is a spirited version, mostly in the octosyllabic measure, of Indian affairs and character from the old narratives, with a lady's story of wrong and penitence, which introduces the rites of the Roman Church in connexion with the Indians. The Bridal of Pennacook is another Indian poem, with the skeleton of a story out of Morton's New England's Canaan, which is made the vehicle for some of the author's finest ballad writings and descriptions of nature. Another reproduction of this old period is the Leaves from Mary art Smith's Journal, written in the antique style brought into vogue by the clever Lady Willoughby's Diary. The fair journalist, with a taste for nature, poetry, and character, and fully sensitive to the religious influences of the spot, visits New England in 1678, and writes her account of the manners and influences of the time to her cousin in England, a gentleman to

ties; though the unnecessary tediousness of its form will remain a permanent objection to it.

Returning to the order of our narrative, from these exhibitions of Whittier's early tastes, we find him, after a few years spent at home in farming, and representing his town in the state legislature, engaged in the proceedings of the American Anti-Slavery Society, of which he was elected a secretary in 1836, and in defence of its principles editing the Pennsylvania Freeman in Philadelphia. The Voices of Freedom, which form a section of his poems in the octavo edition of his writing, afford the best specimens of these numerous effusions. The importance attached to them by the abolition party has probably thrown into the shade some of the finer qualities of his mind.

In 1840 Mr. Whittier took up his residence in Amesbury, Ma-sachusetts, where his late productions have been written, and whence he forwards his contributions to the National Era at Washington; collecting from time to time hi; articles in books.

In 1850 appeared his volume, Old Portraits and Modern Sketches, a series of prose essays on Bunyan, Baxter, Ellwood, Nayler, Andrew Marvell, the Quaker John Roberts, for the ancients; and the Americans, Leggett, the abolition writer Rogers, and the poet Dinsmore for the moderns. In the same year he published Songs of Labor and other Poems, in which he seeks to dignify and render interesting the mechanic arts by the associations of history and fancy. The Chapel of the Hermits, and other Poems, was published in 1853. The chief poem commemorates an incident in the lives of Rousseau and St. Pierre, when they were visiting a hermitage, and while waiting for the monks, Rousseau-as the anecdote is recorded in the "Studies of Nature," -proposed some devotional exercises. Whittier illustrates by this his Quaker argument for the spiritual independence of the soul, which will find its own nutriment for itself.

Mr. Whittier has written too frequently on occasional topics of local or passing interest, to claim for all his verses the higher qualities of poetry. Many of them are purely didactic, and serve the purposes of forcible newspaper leaders. In others he has risen readily to genuine eloquence, or tempered his poetic fire by the simplicity of true pathos. Like most masters of energetic expression, he relies upon the strong Saxon elements of the language, the use of which is noticeable in his poems.

THE NEW WIFE AND THE OLD.†

Dark the halls, and cold the feastGone the bridemaids, gone the priest! All is over-all is done,

Twain of yesterday are one!

Blooming girl and manhood grey,

Autumn in the arms of May!

Hushed within and hushed without,

Dancing feet and wrestlers' shout;

* Boston: Mussey and Co., 1850, with illustrations by Billings.

This Ballad is founded upon one of the marvellous legends connected with the famous Gen. M., of Hampton, N.H., who was regarded by his neighbors as a Yankee Faust, in league with the adversary. I give the story as I heard it when a child from a venerable family visitant.

Dies the bonfire on the hill;
All is dark and all is still,

Save the starlight, save the breeze
Moaning through the grave-yard trees;
And the great sea-waves below,
Like the night's pulse, beating slow.

From the brief dream of a bride
She hath wakened, at his side.
With half uttered shriek and start-
Feels she not his beating heart?
And the pressure of his arm,
And his breathing near and warm?
Lightly from the bridal bed
Springs that fair dishevelled head,
And a feeling, new, intense,
Half of shame, half innocence,
Maiden fear and wonder speaks
Through her lips and changing cheeks.
From the oaken mantel glowing
Faintest light the lamp is throwing
On the mirror's antique mould,
High-backed chair, and wainscot old,
And, through faded curtains stealing,
His dark sleeping face revealing.
Listless lies the strong man there,
Silver-streaked his careless hair;
Lips of love have left no trace
On that hard and haughty face;
And that forehead's knitted thought
Love's soft hand hath not un
unwrought.

"Yet," she sighs, "he loves me well,
More than these calm lips will tell.
Stooping to my lowly state,
He hath made me rich and great,
And I bless him, though he be
Hard and stern to all save me!"
While she speaketh, falls the light
O'er her fingers small and white;
Gold and gem, and costly ring
Back the timid lustre fling-
Love's selectest gifts, and rare,
His proud hand had fastened there.
Gratefully she marks the glow
From those tapering lines of snow;
Fondly o'er the sleeper bending
His black hair with golden blending,
In her soft and light caress,
Cheek and lip together press.
Ha!--that start of horror!--Why
That wild stare and wilder cry,
Full of terror, full of pain?

Is there madness in her brain?
Hark! that gasping, hoarse and low:
'Spare me-spare nie-let me go!"

God have mercy!-Icy cold
Spectral hands her own enfold,
Drawing silently from them
Love's fair gifts of gold and gem,
"Waken! save me!" still as death
At her side he slumbereth.

Ring and bracelet all are gone,
And that ice-cold hand withdrawn;
But she hears a murmur low,
Full of sweetness, full of woe,
Half a sigh and half a moan:
"Fear not! give the dead her own!"
Ah!-the dead wife's voice she knows!
That cold hand whose pressure froze,
Once in warmest life had borne
Gem and band her own hath worn

"Nay, a dream-an isle dream.”
But before the lamp's pale gleam
Tremblingly her hand she raises,—
There no more the diamond blazes,
Clasp of pearl, or ring of gold,—
"Ah!" she sighs, "her hand was cold!"
Broken words of cheer he saith,
But his dark lip quivereth,

And as o'er the past he thinketh,
From his young wife's arms he shrinketh;
Can those soft arms round him lie,
Underneath his dead wife's eye?

She her fair young head can rest
Soothed and child-like on his breast,
And in trustful innocence

Draw new strength and courage thence;
He, the proud man, feels within

But the cowardice of sin!

She can murmur in her thought
Simple prayers her mother taught,
And His blessed angels call,
Whose great love is over all;
He, alone, in prayerless pride,
Meets the dark Past at her side.

One, who living shrank with dread
From his look, or word, or tread,
Unto whom her early grave
Was as freedom to the slave,
Moves him at this midnight hour,
With the dead's unconscious power!

Ah, the dead, the unforgot!

From their solemn homes of thought,
Where the cypress shadows blend
Darkly over foe and friend,
Or in love or sad rebuke,
Back upon the living look.

And the tenderest ones and weakest,

Who their wrongs have borne the meekest,

Lifting from those dark, still places,

Sweet and sad-remembered faces,

O'er the guilty hearts behind
An unwitting triumph find.

A DREAM OF SUMMER.

Bland as the morning breath of June
The southwest breezes play;
And, through its haze, the winter noon
Seems warm as summer's day.
The snow-plumed Angel of the North
Has dropped his icy spear;
Again the mossy earth looks forth,
Again the streams gush clear.
The fox his hill-side cell forsakes,
The muskrat leaves his nook,
The bluebird in the meadow brakes
Is singing with the brook.
"Bear up, oh mother Nature!" cry
Bird, breeze, and streamlet free;
"Our winter voices prophesy

Of summer days to thee!"
So, in those winters of the soul,
By bitter blasts and drear

O'erswept from Memory's frozen pole,

Will sunny days appear.
Reviving Hope and Faith, they show
The soul its living powers,
And how beneath the winter's snow
Lie germs of summer flowers!

The Night is mother of the Day,
The Winter of the Spring,
And ever upon old Decay

The greenest mosses cling.
Behind the cloud the star-light lurks,
Through showers the sunbeams fall;
For God, who loveth all His works,
Has left His Hope with all!

PALESTINE.

Blest land of Judea! thrice hallowed of song,
Where the holiest of memories pilgrim-like throng;
In the shade of thy palms, by the shores of thy sea,
On the hills of thy beauty, my heart is with thee.
With the eye of a spirit I look on that shore,
Where pilgrim and prophet have lingered before;
With the glide of a spirit I traverse the sod
Made bright by the steps of the angels of God.
Blue sea of the hills!-in my spirit I hear
Thy waters, Genesaret, chime on my ear;
Where the Lowly and Just with the people sat down,
And thy spray on the dust of His sandals was thrown.
Beyond are Bethulia's mountains of green,
And the desolate hills of the wild Gadarene;
And I pause on the goat-crags of Tabor to see
The gleam of thy waters, O dark Galilee!

Hark, a sound in the valley! where swollen and strong,

Thy river, O Kishon, is sweeping along;

Where the Canaanite strove with Jehovah in vain, And thy torrent grew dark with the blood of the slain.

There down from his mountains stern Zebulon came,
And Napthali's stag, with his eye-balls of flame,
And the chariots of Jabin rolled harmlessly on,
For the arm of the Lord was Abinoam's son!
There sleep the still rocks and the caverns which
rang

To the song which the beautiful prophetess sang,
When the princes of Issachar stood by her side,
And the shout of a host in its triumph replied.
Lo, Bethlehem's hill-site before me is seen,

With the mountains around, and the valleys between;
There rested the shepherds of Judah, and there
The songs of the angels rose sweet on the air.
And Bethany's palm trees in beauty still threw
Their shadows at noon on the ruins below;
But where are the sisters who hastened to greet
The lowly Redeemer, and sit at His feet?

I tread where the TWELVE in their way-faring trod;
I stand where they stood with the chosen of God—
Where His blessing was heard and His lessons were
taught,

Where the blind were restored and the healing was wrought.

Oh, here with His flock the sad Wanderer cameThese hills He toiled over in grief, are the sameThe founts where He drank by the wayside still flow, And the same airs are blowing which breathed on His brow!

And throned on her hills sits Jerusalem yet,

But with dust on her forehead, and chains on her

feet;

For the crown of her pride to the mocker hath gone,
And the holy Shechinah is dark where it shone.
But wherefore this dream of the earthly abode
Of Humanity clothed in the brightness of God?
Where my spirit but turned from the outward ad
dim,

It could gaze, even now, on the presence of Him!
Not in clouds and in terrors, but gentle as when,
In love and in meekness, He moved among men;
And the voice which breathed peace to the waves of
the sea,

In the hush of my spirit would whisper to me!

And what if my feet may not tread where He stood,
Nor my ears hear the dashing of Galilee's flood,
Nor my eyes see the cross which He bowed him to
bear,

Nor my knees press Gethsemane's garden of prayer.
Yet loved of the Father, Thy Spirit is near
To the meek, and the lowly, and penitent here;
And the voice of Thy love is the same even now,
As at Bethany's tomb, or on Olivet's brow.

Oh, the outward hath gone!--but in glory and power,

The SPIRIT Surviveth the things of an hour;
Unchanged, undecaying, its Pentecost flame
On the heart's sacred altar is burning the same!

GONE.

Another hand is beckoning us,
Another call is given;

And glows once more with Angel-steps
The path which reaches Heaven.

Our young and gentle friend whose smile
Made brighter summer hours,
Amid the frosts of autumn time
Has left us, with the flowers.

No paling of the cheek of bloom
Forewarned us of decay;

No shadow from the Silent Land
Fell around our sister's way.

The light of her young life went down,
As sinks behind the hill

The glory of a setting star

Clear, suddenly, and still.

As pure and sweet, her fair brow seemed-
Eternal as the sky;

And like the brook's low song, her voice-
A sound which could not die.

And half we deemed she needed not
The changing of her sphere,

To give to Heaven a Shining One,
Who walked an Angel here.

The blessing of her quiet life
Fell on us like the dew;

And good thoughts, where her footsteps pressed,
Like fairy blossoms grew.

Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds
Were in her very look;

We read her face, as one who reads
A true and holy book:

The measure of a blessed hymn,

To which our hearts could move;
The breathing of an inward psalm;
A canticle of love.

We miss her in the place of prayer,
And by the hearth-fire's light;
We pause beside her door to hear
Once more her sweet "Good night!"