6. The city politicians, in office and out of it, who were wont to receive the aid of the Funks (a very energetic cohort) at elections, and who in return unscrupulously used both power and influence to keep them from punishment. All this cunning machinery was brought to naught and New York relieved of a shame and a pest by the courage, energy, perseverance, and good sense of one Yankee officer--Russell Wells, a policeman. Mr. Wells took about six months to finish up his work. He began it of his own accord, finding that the spirit of the police regulations required it; prosecuted the undertaking without fear or favor, finding not very much support from the judicial authorities, and sometimes actual and direct discouragement. His method was to mount guard over one auction shop at a time, and warn all whom he saw going in, and to follow up all complaints to the utmost until that shop was closed, when he laid siege to another. Various offers of money, direct and indirect, were made him. One fellow offered him $500 to walk on the other side of the street. Another offered him $1,000 to drop the undertaking. Another hinted at a regular salary of hush-money, saying "he had now got these fellows where he could make as much out of them as he wanted to, right along." Sometimes they threatened him with "murder and sudden death." Several times they got out an injunction upon him, and several times sued him for slander. One of their complaints charged, with ludicrous hypocrisy, that the defendant, "with malicious intent, stood round the door uttering slanderous charges against the good name, fame, and credit of the defendant," just as foolish old lawyers used to argue that "the greater the truth the greater the libel." Sometimes they argued and indignantly denounced. One of them told him, "he was a thief and a murderer, driving men out of employment whose wives and children depended on their business for support." Another contended that their business was just as fair as that of the stock-operators in Wall street. I fear that wasn't making out much of a case. But their threats were idle; their suits, and prosecutions, and injunctions, never came to a head; their bribes did not operate. The officer, imperturbably good-natured, but horribly diligent, watched, and warned, and hunted, and complained, and squeezed back their money at the rate of $500 or $1,000 every month, until they were perfectly sickened. One by one they shut up shop. One went to his farm, another to his merchandise, another to emigrant running, another (known by the elegant surname of Blur-eye Thompson) to raising recruits, several into the bounty jumping business. Such was the life and death of an outrageous humbug and nuisance, whose like was not to be found in any other city on earth; and would not have been endured in any except this careless, money-getting, misgoverned one of New York. CHAPTER XXI.