The piano now has a rival in the United States in that fine instrument before mentioned, which has grown from the melodeon into the cabinet organ. We do not hesitate to say, that the cabinet organs of Messrs. Mason and Hamlin only need to be as generally known as the piano in order to share the favor of the public equally with it. It seems to us peculiarly the instrument for _men_. We trust the time is at hand when it will be seen that it is not less desirable for boys to learn to play upon an instrument than girls; and how much more a little skill in performing may do for a man than for a woman! A boy can hardly be a perfect savage, nor a man a money-maker or a pietist, who has acquired sufficient command of an instrument to play upon it with pleasure. How often, when we have been listening to the swelling music of the cabinet organs at the ware-rooms of Messrs. Mason and Hamlin in Broadway, have we desired to put one of those instruments in every clerk's boarding-house room, and tell him to take all the ennui, and half the peril, out of his life by learning to play upon it! No business man who works as intensely as we do can keep alive the celestial harmonies within him,--no, nor the early wrinkles from his face,--without some such pleasant mingling of bodily rest and mental exercise as playing upon an instrument. The simplicity of the means by which music is produced from the cabinet organ is truly remarkable. It is called a "reed" instrument; which leads many to suppose that the cane-brake is despoiled to procure its sound-giving apparatus. Not so. The reed employed is nothing but a thin strip of brass with a tongue slit in it, the vibration of which causes the musical sound. One of the reeds, though it produces a volume of sound only surpassed by the pipes of an organ, weighs about an ounce, and can be carried in a vest-pocket. In fact, a cabinet organ is simply an accordeon of immense power and improved mechanism. Twenty years ago, one of our melodeon-makers chanced to observe that the accordeon produced a better tone when it was drawn out than when it was pushed in; and this fact suggested the first great improvement in the melodeon. Before that time, the wind from the bellows, in all melodeons, was forced through the reeds. Melodeons on the improved principle were constructed so that the wind was drawn through the reeds. The credit of introducing this improvement is due to the well-known firm of Carhart, Needham, & Co., and it was as decided an improvement in the melodeon as the introduction of the hammer in the harpsichord.