The “quiet street” which I selected for its retirement, is infested with organ-grinders, who reap a daily harvest among the infantile population for which quiet streets are remarkable. My landlady—worthy Mrs. Squall—has six little Squallets, who delight in hand-organs, and who interrupt my musical waking-dreams of the twilight hour, every day, with appeals for sixpence to give “the new organ-grinder, with his sweet little monkey.” Since I came into these quarters, a youth, with a pale face and a letter of introduction to recommend him to me, has established himself in the room above me. He has taken to flute-playing! His design is either suicide or murder; and unless the first soon takes place, and his brains are blown out through his instrument, I feel that murder will be the result, and myself the victim. Across the way dwells a practitioner on the trombone, and twice a week a brass band meets in his room to practice, while again twice a week the choir of —— church assembles next door to me to rehearse for their Sunday performances. Was any one ever plunged into such a combination of horrors? I have heretofore refrained from giving up this lodging among the fiends, by the presence of Mrs. Squall’s young niece, Rosalie ——. She is young and fresh, fair as a strain from _La Dame Blanche_, graceful as an air of Mozart, eloquent in speech as one of Mendelssohn’s _Lieder Ohne Worte_, and symmetrical in figure as a _scena_ from Rossini. She has brown hair, blue eyes, a knowledge of French and Italian, a smattering of the German language, and a thorough knowledge of German wools, $5000 a year, an amiable disposition, and, as I fancy, a decided penchant for me. I was already nearly on my knees to her this morning, when she suggested that we should sing together, and herself selected the duet “_La ci darem la mano_,” from Don Giovanni. Such a selection was divine, and I eagerly sought out the opera and began my part, feeling convinced that I should ratify the vows of the song in plain prose and good English as soon as it was over. I held my breath as I waited for the first tones of what I felt must be an angel’s voice, but what mortal agony could equal mine, when I found her pretensions to divinity all a sham? She sung a full semi-tone above the piano, and with a hard, rasping, metallic voice that grated like a file, and fairly set my teeth on edge. “Oh! false, false, false Rosalie!” It is possible that I did not finish the duet as I began it. I had lost all consciousness, except of the horror of my situation, and a sense of a heart crushed in its first and purest affections by a false voice—far worse to me than a false heart.