E-text prepared by Joel Erickson, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 21997-h.htm or 21997-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/9/9/21997/21997-h/21997-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/1/9/9/21997/21997-h.zip) CHRISTIE'S OLD ORGAN Or "Home, Sweet Home" by O. F. WALTON Philadelphia Henry Altemus Company [Illustration: The Clergyman and Christie.] CHRISTIE'S OLD ORGAN; OR, "HOME, SWEET HOME." CHAPTER I. THE OLD ORGAN. "Home, sweet home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home," played the unmusical notes of a barrel-organ in the top room of a lodging-house in a dreary back street. The words certainly did not seem to apply to that dismal abode; there were not many there who knew much of the sweets of home. It was a very dark, uncomfortable place, and as the lodgers in the lower room turned over on their wretched beds, many of which were merely bare wooden benches, it may be that one and another gave a sigh as he thought how far he was from "Home, sweet home." But the organ played on, though the hour was late, and the dip candle was put out, and the fire was dying away. If you had climbed the crooked staircase, you would have seen an old man sitting alone in his attic, and smiling at his organ as he turned it with a trembling hand. Old Treffy loved his barrel-organ; it was the one comfort of his life. He was a poor, forlorn old man, without a friend in the world. Every one that he had loved was dead; he had no one to whom he could talk, or to whom he could tell his troubles, and thus he gathered up all the remaining bits and fragments of love in his old heart, faded and withered though they were, and he gave them all to his old organ, which had well-nigh seen as many summers as he had. It was getting very antiquated and old-fashioned now; the red silk in front of it was very soiled and worn, and it could not play any of the new tunes of which the children were so fond. It sometimes struck old Treffy that he and his organ were very much alike,--they were getting altogether behind the age; and people looked down upon them and pushed past them, as they hurried along the street. And though old Treffy was very patient, yet he could not help feeling this.