In fact, an honourable member of the Commons' House
of Parliament made a motion in the House, towards the close of the
last session, for the immediate prohibition of these monster
nuisances, and quoted several cases of alarm and danger to life of
which they had been the originating cause. These formidable erections
are for the most part the property and handiwork of the men who travel
with them, and who must levy a pretty heavy contribution on the public
to defray their expenses. They perform entire overtures and long
concerted pieces, being furnished with spiral barrels, and might
probably produce a tolerable effect at the distance of a mile or
so--at least we never heard one yet without incontinently wishing it a
mile off. By a piece of particular ill-fortune, we came one day upon
one undergoing the ceremony of tuning, on a piece of waste-ground at
the back of Coldbath Prison. The deplorable wail of those tortured
pipes and reeds, and the short savage grunt of the bass mystery,
haunted us, a perpetual day-and-night-mare, for a month. We could not
help noticing, however, that the jauntily-dressed fellow, whose
fingers were covered with showy rings, and ears hung with long drops,
who performed the operation, managed it with consummate skill, and
with an ear for that sort of music most marvellously discriminating.
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