has been left
to the haphazard vignettist of Grub Street. He is the grave and
real menace of lovers; his head is sacred and terrible, his power
illimitable. There is one way--only one--to deal with him; but Robert
Williams, having a brother of Penrod's age, understood that way.

Robert had one dollar in the world. He gave it to Penrod immediately.

Enslaved forever, the new Rockefeller rose and went forth upon the
highway, an overflowing heart bursting the floodgates of song.

"In her eyes the light of love was soffly gleamun',
So sweetlay,
So neatlay.
On the banks the moon's soff light was brightly streamun',
Words of love I then spoke TO her.
She was purest of the PEW-er:
'Littil sweetheart, do not sigh,
Do not weep and do not cry.
I will build a littil cottige just for yew-EW-EW and I.'"

In fairness, it must be called to mind that boys older than Penrod have
these wellings of pent melody; a wife can never tell when she is to
undergo a musical morning, and even the golden wedding brings her no
security, a man of ninety is liable to bust-loose in song, any time.

Invalids murmured pitifully as Penrod came within hearing; and people
trying to think cursed the day that they were born, when he went
shrilling by. His hands in his pockets, his shining face uplifted to the
sky of June, he passed down the street, singing his way into the heart's
deepest hatred of all who heard him.

"One evuning I was sturow-ling
Midst the city of the DEAD,
I viewed where all a-round me
Their PEACE-full graves was SPREAD.
But that which touched me mostlay----"

He had reached his journey's end, a junk-dealer's shop wherein lay
the long-desired treasure of his soul--an accordion which might
have possessed a high quality of interest for an antiquarian, being
unquestionably a ruin, beautiful in decay, and quite beyond the
sacrilegious reach of the restorer. But it was still able to disgorge
sounds--loud, strange, compelling sounds, which could be heard for a
remarkable distance in all directions; and it had one rich calf-like
tone that had gone to Penrod's heart. He obtained the instrument for
twenty-two cents, a price long since agreed upon with the junk-dealer,
who falsely claimed a loss of profit, Shylock that he was! He had found
the wreck in an alley.

With this purchase suspended from his shoulder by a faded green cord,
Penrod set out in a somewhat homewar