But a man so circumstanced is at the head of the vagabond profession,
the major part of whom wander at their own sweet will wherever chance
may guide. The hand-organ which they lug about varies in value from
L.10 to L.150--at least, this last-named sum was the cost of a
first-rate instrument thirty years ago, such as were borne about by
the street-organists of Bath, Cheltenham, and the fashionable
watering-places, and the grinders of the West End of London at that
period, when musical talent was much less common than it is now. We
have seen a contract for repairs to one of these instruments,
including a new stop and new barrels, amounting to the liberal sum of
L.75: it belonged to a man who had grown so impudent in prosperity, as
to incur the penalty of seven years' banishment from the town in which
he turned his handle, for the offence of thrashing a young nobleman,
who stood between him and his auditors too near for his sense of
dignity. 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.
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