persons, among whom organ-grinders fall, as being people who beg,
and exhibit for money, and create disorder. If this is so, why can
the police not be forced to intervene and forbid them their
outrageous behavior?--for these fellows do not only not know or
care for the observance of the city ordinance, which certainly is
binding on them, but, relying on a fellow-feeling of vulgarity with
the mob, resist all attempts made to remove them from the exercise
of their most fearful beggary, which is not even tolerated any
longer at Naples.
R.
NEW YORK, _February_ 20th.
[Our correspondent's appeal should be addressed to the Board of
Aldermen and the Mayor. They consented to the licensing of the
grinders in the face of a popular protest.--ED. EVENING ----.]
Now certainly that was not a good letter to write, and is not a pleasant
letter to read; but the worst of it is, I am afraid that you can never
make the writer of it understand why it is unfair and unwise and
downright cruel.
For I think we can figure out the personality of that writer pretty
easily. She is a nice old or middle-aged lady, unmarried, of course;
well-to-do, and likely to leave a very comfortable fortune behind her
when she leaves all worldly things; and accustomed to a great deal of
deference from her nephews and nieces. She is occasionally subject to
nervous headaches, and she wrote this letter while she had one of her
headaches. She had been lying down and trying to get a wink of sleep
when the organ-grinder came under the window. It was a new organ and
very loud, and its organ-grinder was proud of it and ground it with all
his might, and it was certainly a very annoying instrument to delicate
ears and sensitive nerves.
Now, she might have got rid of the nuisance at once by a very simple
expedient. If she had sent Abigail, her maid, down to the street, with a
dime, and told her to say: "Sicka lady, no playa," poor Pedro would have
swung his box of whistles over his shoulder and trudged contentedly on.
But, instead, she sent Abigail down without the dime, and with
instructions to threaten the man with immediate arrest and imprisonment.
And Abigail went down and scolded the man with the more vigor that she
herself had been scolded all day on account of the headache. And so
Pedro just grinned at her in his exasperating furrin w
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