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Updated: June 23, 2025
It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ and once he was an organ-grinder!
His opinion was that the more so the better. "Very well. Then, in the second act I disguise myself. I'll come on as an organ-grinder, sing a song in broken English, then as a policeman, or a young swell about town. Give me plenty of opportunity, that's the great thing opportunity to be really funny, I mean. We don't want any of the old stale tricks." I promised him my support.
Perhaps she was unheeding; perhaps she was stung into retort; at all events, she turned and faced him. "Leave her alone?" she said, with a flash of defiance in her look. "It is you who ought to leave her alone! She has cheated you why should you show temper? Why should you sulk with every one, simply because an Italian organ-grinder has shown you what she thinks of you?
The ultimate fact remained that here was a genuine adventure, and as connoisseurs of romance we were bound to exploit it to the utmost limit of our ability. So be it, then. "The finding of that organ-grinder is our first and obvious procedure," said Indiman, slowly. "And the clew to his identity lies, as you have explained, in his instrument."
"You are both of you a year older and wiser," said the widow, meditatively; "and you have learned, I hope, not to irritate a man needlessly. I never irritated Corwin in all my life. They don't understand it." "Here comes Mr. Haymaker," observed Miss Leithe. "I shall ask him." "Don't ask him in," said Mrs. Corwin, retiring; "he chatters like an organ-grinder."
He encouraged us in the belief that we should find the journey more rapid and easy in winter than in summer. He said the Swedes feared the North and few of them ever made a winter journey thither, but nothing could stop the Americans and the English from going anywhere. Lat. 60° 35' N., the 17th of December, and no snow yet! In the streets, we met an organ-grinder playing the Marseillaise.
As he began to hurry, the organ-grinder's black eyes snapped, and he stopped playing and beckoned to a big officer of the law who stood near. "My dog has been stolen," he exclaimed. "Come with me, after the thief. I will pay you." The big man obeyed and walked along, grumbling: "Is the city full of stolen dogs, I wonder?" he muttered. "It is my dancing dog!" explained the organ-grinder.
He looked up, surprised at the invitation, but thankfully accepted it, and Nelly brought two chairs into the hall for him and the little girl. Then, as the only entertainment she was able to supply, she filled two glasses with the coldest water she could find, and shyly offered them to her guests. "Ah, it is good," said the organ-grinder, when he had drained his glass.
We have seen a colored girl attempt a selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech, and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel, limber up her battery and take a new position, and unlimber and send volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the audience, and then she would catch on to the highest note she could reach and hang to it like a dog to a root, till you would think they would have to throw a pail of water on her to make her let go, and all the time she would be biting and shaking like a terrier with a rat, and finally give one kick at her red trail with her hind foot, and back off the stage looking as though she would have to be carried on a dust pan, and the people in the audience would look at each other in pity and never give her a cheer, when, if she had come out and patted her leg, and put one hand up to her ear, and sung, "Ise a Gwine to See Massa Jesus Early in de Mornin'," they would have split the air wide open with cheers, and called her out five times.
So when Yung Pak's father made him a present of a monkey a real monkey alive he just danced with glee. This monkey was not a very large one, not over a foot high, but he could cut capers and play tricks equal to any monkey you ever saw travelling with an organ-grinder.
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