Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/167



N Chatham street, New York City, between the City Hall and the Bowery, there used to be an old anatomical museum, from the second story window of which came continuously, since a time to which the memory of young men runneth not to the contrary, the monotonous tones of a hand-organ. It was turned by a dim-eyed, and almost deaf old man—the deafness in this instance, being his gain rather than his misfortune—and from early morning till the time of the closing of the shops, he never left it except to partake hastily of his frugal meal. Day after day, for years, the passers-by heard those slow old tunes, droning out, apparently slower and slower, as though on the point of dying away, and yet never ceasing. Possibly this man had begun his working life at that organ, and had passed his prime, and grown old and deaf earning his daily bread—and not much more—by this daily mechanical turning of a crank. It led one to wonder why the living and the thinking force residing in the body of a man, should be cheaper than any unintelligent power of steam, or wind, or water that could be chained to turn this crank; and why a human being, "noble in reason, infinite in faculties, in form and moving express and admirable, in action like an angel, in apprehension like a god," should become so utter an automaton, with no opportunity on earth for any better work. It led one to wonder whether this man's mother, in the joy at his unfolding reason, had ever thought of the purpose for which he was born—to be a mere machine, a substitute in the present for the perpetual motion of the future. But, in more practical mood, dismissing these sentimental fancies, the writer did intend to go in and talk with him some day, at the interval when he ate his cold lunch from his dinner pail—so long a motion of the crank to buy so little and unsatisfactory exercise to the jaws—and see whether, after all, under this machine life, one might not find a man there still, a rare man too, full of the memories and histories of all the tunes of half a century, that he had ground out of that organ, and that had come to him in the successive editions of the song books. He might tell us what songs had been popular, how they had risen and waned in public favor, what local events, what queer by-words, what jokes pertinent to the day, but now forgotten, had been sung by the merry people of the time. Some songs had no doubt been suddenly popular, and had as quickly passed to obscurity, while others, like "Home, Sweet Home" and "Yankee Doodle," had always been on his list. It would be curious to know how one song succeeded