_."

A PEEP UNDER GROUND.

THE RAFFERTYS AND THE ROURKES.

I have made up my mind, that there is nothing lost in New-York. You
open your window and toss out a bit of paper or silk, and though it may
be no bigger than a sixpence, it is directly snatched up and carried
off, by a class of persons the Parisians call, "Chiffoniers"
(rag-pickers)! You order a load of coal, or wood, to be dropped at your
door;--in less than five minutes a whole horde of ragged children are
greedily waiting round to pick up the chips, and bits, that are left
after the wood or coal is carried in and housed; and often locks of
hair are pulled out, and bloody noses ensue, in the strife to get the
largest share. You will see these persons round the stores, looking for
bits of paper, and silk, and calico, that are swept out by the clerks,
upon the pavement; you will see them watching round provision shops,
for decayed vegetables, and fruits, and rinds of melons, which they
sell to keepers of pigs; you will see them picking up peach stones to
sell to confectioners, who crack them and use the kernels; you will see
them round old buildings, carrying off, at the risk of cracked heads,
pieces of decayed timber, and old nails; you will see them round new
buildings, when the workmen are gone to meals, scampering off with
boards, shingles, and bits of scaffolding. I thought I had seen all the
ingenuity there was to be seen, in picking up odds and ends in
New-York, but I hadn't then seen Michael Rafferty!

Michael Rafferty, and Terence Rourke, who was a wood sawyer by
profession, lived in a cellar together; the little Raffertys, and
little Rourkes, with their mammas, filling up all the extra space,
except just so much as was necessary to swing the cellar door open. A
calico curtain was swung across the cellar for a boundary line, to
which the little Rourkes and little Raffertys paid about as much
attention, as the whites did to the poor Indians' landmarks.

At the time I became acquainted with the two families, quite a jealousy
had sprung up on account of Mr. Rafferty's having made a successful
butter speculation. Mrs. Rourke, in consequence, had kept the calico
curtain tightly drawn for some weeks, and boxed six of the little
Rourkes' ears (twelve in all,) for speaking to the little Raffertys
through the rents in the curtain.

All this I learned from Mrs. Rafferty, as I sat on an old barrel in the
north-west corner of her cellar. "It was alwa