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The clerk tried to revive the tones of the instrument, but failed; at last he bethought him that he would try the skill of young Jackson, who had succeeded in making some alterations and improvements in the hand-organ of the parish church.
Very often he had heard by chance a piano, an unknown voice, even a hand-organ in the street playing some old air, which had suddenly made him feel twenty years younger, filling his breast with tender recollections, long buried. But this appeal, continued, incessant, intangible, almost irritating! What was there near him to revive thus his extinct emotions?
"Go up and get the pennies!" the man would cry, and he would pull and jerk on the long string so that the collar around Mappo's neck choked and hurt him. Then the monkey would squeal, and hold the chain with his paw, so the pulling on it would not pain him so much. The hand-organ man was not very kind to Mappo. But Mappo made up his mind he would do his best to please his master.
"A hand-organ is an every-day affair. We even hear them in the country at times." But they both followed the sound, veiling their eagerness as best they might. When they came in sight of the organ-grinder they both sighed, for he had no assistance from a little dog nor from any one else. The princess was for turning away impatiently. "Wait," said Gabriel, "we are interested in organ music."
These creatures were hardly to be recognized as human beings; they were some new grotesque race of apes. They could not walk, they could only shamble; they could not laugh, they could only leer. I saw a hand-organ playing, and turned away the things they did in their efforts to dance were not to be watched.
We supposed that this custom was a peculiarity of the capital, but this day after dinner a hand-organ played waltzes and songs, and, as if this were not enough, a performer on the guitar succeeded, playing songs, while two or three persons with long cards filled with specimens of natural history lobsters, crabs, and shells of various kinds were busy in displaying their handiwork to us, and each concluded his part of the ceremony by presenting a little cup for a contribution."
Since the invention of the metal reed, however, which, under various modifications and combinations, supplies the sole utterance of the harmonicon, celestina, seraphina, colophon, accordian, concertina, &c. &c. and which does away with the necessity for pipes, the street hand-organ has assumed a different and infinitely worse character.
Haystacks are large places and needles small objects. Two days went by days spent in aimless wandering about the streets waiting for a distant hand-organ to give tongue. Then a hot chase, only to draw another blank. On the third day I came home alone about five o'clock. The weather was really hot again, and I was tired out with tramping.
It was no easy matter, and his walk slackened, till, at the corner of the great thoroughfare, he stood still, looking at a poor woman who ground a tuneless hand-organ. The instrument of tympanum torture was on wheels, and to the back of it was attached a cradle.
Those basins are unendurable sinks of iniquitous ugliness, unless the tide's in and there's a sunset going on. Just look now! Who cares whether Honfleur has been done to death by the tourist horde or not? and been painted until one's art-stomach turns? I presume I ought to beg your pardon, but I can't stand the abomination of modern repetitions; the hand-organ business in art, I call it.
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