Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/373

Rh close under my windows. I was in ill-health, and engaged in a subject requiring much attention. I knocked at the window; but the band continued their performcmce. Then I opened the window and desired them to desist; they still continued, and I then sent my servant to desire them to go away. Having finished their tune, they removed about five doors from my residence, and commenced another performance. My patience being exhausted, I then went out myself to desire my tormentors to depart. My servant went on to the station before he could get a constable. In the meantime the band had removed about six doors further, and began another tune. At last my servant arrived with a policeman, who took down the names and addresses of the nine musicians constituting the band.

The next day I paid twenty-seven shillings for summonses. The day after, the police informed me that all the addresses given, which were either in Richmond or Brentford, were false. I applied to the police, who watched at certain haunts; but they only succeeded in identifying two of them. I then obtained warrants to apprehend those two, and came up from the country expressly to attend at the police-court; but the men were not to be found. I am still waiting in the hope that our police is not quite so inefficient as to allow them to escape. I have already been put to the charge of employing a solicitor and to other expenses. But the band itself is, I believe, still going about in London and playing every day.

Now, if it had been legal for the police to have taken possession of the instruments of those disturbers of the public peace, a false address would have been useless, for it would have been cheaper to have paid the penalties than to have lost their instnunents.

It is, I presume, admitted that streets and high roads are not