Jersey Street and Jersey Lane: Urban and Suburban SketchesBunner, H. C. (Henry Cuyler)
General
Jersey Street and Jersey Lane: Urban and Suburban Sketches
Bunner, H. C. (Henry Cuyler)
United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
SIR: In yesterday's issue you took occasion to speak of the
organ-grinding nuisance, about which I hope you will let me ask you
the following questions: Why must decent people all over town
suffer these pestilential beggars to go about torturing our senses,
and practically blackmailing the listeners into paying them to go
away? Is it not a most ridiculous excuse on the part of the police,
when ordered to arrest these vagrants, to tell a citizen that the
city license exempts these public nuisances from arrest? Let me
ask, Can the city by any means legalize a common-law misdemeanor?
If not, how can the city authorities grant exemption to these
sturdy beggars and vagrants by their paying for a license? The
Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, it seems, provide
for the punishment of gamblers, dive-keepers, and other disorderly
persons, among whom organ-grinders fall, as being people who beg,
and exhibit for money, and create disorder. If this is so, why can
the police not be forced to intervene and forbid them their
outrageous behavior?--for these fellows do not only not know or
care for the observance of the city ordinance, which certainly is
binding on them, but, relying on a fellow-feeling of vulgarity with
the mob, resist all attempts made to remove them from the exercise
of their most fearful beggary, which is not even tolerated any
longer at Naples.
R.
NEW YORK, _February_ 20th.
[Our correspondent's appeal should be addressed to the Board of
Aldermen and the Mayor. They consented to the licensing of the
grinders in the face of a popular protest.--ED. EVENING ----.]
Now certainly that was not a good letter to write, and is not a pleasant
letter to read; but the worst of it is, I am afraid that you can never
make the writer of it understand why it is unfair and unwise and
downright cruel.
For I think we can figure out the personality of that writer pretty
easily. She is a nice old or middle-aged lady, unmarried, of course;
well-to-do, and likely to leave a very comfortable fortune behind her
when she leaves all worldly things; and accustomed to a great deal of
deference from her nephews and nieces. She is occasionally subject to
nervous headaches, and she wrote this letter while she had one of her
headaches. She had been lying down and trying to get a wink of sleep
when the organ-grinder came under the window. It was a new organ and
very loud, and its organ-grinder was proud of it and ground it with all
his might, and it was certainly a very annoying instrument to delicate
ears and sensitive nerves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account