r! per amor di Dio, eccellenza,
date qualche cosa!' If you comply with his request, his voluble thanks
are too rapid for your comprehension; and if you refuse, he laughs
merrily in your face as he turns away to rejoin his friend and
coadjutor. He is a favourite subject with the young artists about
town, especially if he is very good-looking, or, better still,
excessively ugly; and he picks up many a shilling for sitting,
standing, or sprawling on the ground, as a model in the studio. It
sometimes happens that he has no organ--his monkey being his only
stock in trade. When the monkey dies--and one sees by their melancholy
comicalities, and cautious and painful grimaces, that the poor brutes
are destined to a short time of it--he takes up with white mice, or,
lacking these, constructs a dancing-doll, which, with the aid of a
short plank with an upright at one end, to which is attached a cord
passing through the body of the doll, and fastened to his right leg,
he keeps constantly on the jig, to the music of a tuneless
tin-whistle, bought for a penny, and a very primitive parchment tabor,
manufactured by himself. These shifts he resorts to in the hope of
retaining his independence and personal freedom--failing to succeed in
which, he is driven, as a last resource, to the comfortless drudgery
of piano-grinding, which we shall have to notice in its turn.

3. The handbarrow-organist is not uncommonly some lazy Irishman, if he
be not a sickly Savoyard, who has mounted his organ upon a handbarrow
of light and somewhat peculiar construction, for the sake of
facilitating the task of locomotion. From the nature of his equipage,
he is not given to grinding so perpetually as his heavily-burdened
brethren. He cannot of course grind, as they occasionally do, as he
travels along, so he pursues a different system of tactics. He walks
leisurely along the quiet ways, turning his eyes constantly to the
right and left, on the look-out for a promising opening. The sight of
a group of children at a parlour-window brings him into your front
garden, where he establishes his instrument with all the deliberation
of a proprietor of the premises. He is pretty sure to begin his
performance in the middle of a tune, with a hiccoughing kind of sound,
as though the pipes were gasping for breath. He puts a sudden period
to his questionable harmony the very instant he gets his penny, having
a notion, which is tolerably correct, that you pay him for his sil