Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/67

 end of Leather-lane, in Little Bath-street and Warner-street, they swarm, and there is quite the look and smell and noise of the back slums of an Italian city. The butchers' shops are stocked with the heads, trotters, and "innards" of bullocks, calves, sheep, and pigs, and there is the "Piggy-Wiggy pork-shop," and Italian barbers and cobblers. The Restaurant Italiano Milard is where many of the Italians spend their lazy day—which is Friday. There are also ice-cream makers, roast chestnut "merchants," and dealers in old clothes. Round the latter the Italian women congregate, and bargain for, and try on the gaudy-coloured garments—gowns, petticoats, and shawls, which must have been specially selected to suit the tastes of the Italians.

At the corner of Little Bath-street is the headquarters of the organ-grinders. There they congregate early in the morning before they start on their rounds, and distribute their monkeys, babies, and dancing children. The premises belong to one of the principal makers of piano-organs in London, and the whole of the ground floor is arranged as a depôt, where some hundreds of instruments are stored. Part of them may be hired, but most of them are owned by the people we see playing them in the streets. A small sum is charged for "shed room," and any alterations or repairs can be done on the premises. The proprietors are Italians, and are spoken of as very fair-dealing people. We found, on inquiry, that at least halt of the owners of the piano-organs are English people, who have bought their instruments, paying £10 or £12 for them by instalments. The charge for hire is about 10s. per week. There is a choice of all the latest popular operatic and music-hall tunes, and generally all the tunes are changed every six months, though some tunes, like "The Lost Chord" and "The Village Blacksmith," are seldom taken off the barrels. A piano-organ, if taken care of and protected from the wet, will last ten or twelve years. A new tune, if not very florid, can be put in for 9s. or 10s.

The monkey organ-man with the old-fashioned discordant barrel-organ is an old stager—the original "organ-grinder." He looks out for the streets where straw is laid down, and begins to grind directly. An