The author sees an organ-grinder playing his gay tunes in Wall Street, New York, among the buildings where enormous financial transactions are carried on. He (the author) imagines this wandering minstrel to be Pan himself, assuming a modern form. Read the notes carefully for what is said about Pan. Notice, in the poem, how skillfully the author brings out the contrast between the easy-going days of ancient Greece and the busy, rushing times of modern America. Of what value is the word _serenely_ in the first stanza? What is the "curbstone war"? Do you think the old-fashioned Pan's pipe is common now? Could a man play an organ and a pipe at the same time? Why is the city spoken of as "sordid"? What is the "civic ear"? In the description of the player, how is the idea of his being Pan emphasized? How was it that the bulls and bears drew together? In plain words who were the people whom the author describes under Greek names? Show how aptly the mythological characters are fitted to modern persons. Read carefully what is said about the power of music, in the stanza beginning "O heart of Nature." Who was the man in blue? Why did he interfere? Why is the organ-grinder called a "vagrant demigod"? What was it that the author doubted? What is meant here by "Great Pan is dead"? Does the author mean more than the mere words seem to express? Do you think that people are any happier in these commercial times than they were in ancient Greece? After you have studied the poem and mastered all the references, read the poem through, thinking of its meaning and its lively measure. Read Mrs. Browning's poem, _A Musical Instrument_, which is about Pan and his pipe of reeds. COLLATERAL READINGS Nooks and Corners of Old New York Charles Hemstreet In Old New York Thomas A. Janvier The Greatest Street in the World: Broadway Stephen Jenkins The God of Music (poem) Edith M. Thomas A Musical Instrument Elizabeth Barrett Browning Classic Myths (See Index) C.M. Gayley The Age of Fable Thomas Bulfinch A Butterfly in Wall Street (in _Madrigals and Catches_) Frank D. Sherman Come Pan, and Pipe (in _Madrigals and Catches_) " " " Pan Learns Music (poem) Henry van Dyke Peeps at Great Cities: New York Hildegarde Hawthorne Vignettes of Manhattan Brander Matthews New York Society Ralph Pulitzer In the Cities (poem) R.W. Gilder Up at a Villa--Down in the City Robert Browning The Faun in Wall Street[5] (poem) John Myers O'Hara THE HAND OF LINCOLN EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN Look on this cast, and know the hand That bore a nation in its hold; From this mute witness understand What Lincoln was,--how large of mould