When I was a child the piano-organ and that terrible variant that reproduces the characteristic stutter of the mandoline with deadly fidelity were hardly dreamed of, but the ordinary barrel-organ and the prehistoric hurdy-gurdy, whose quavering notes suggested senile decay, satisfied our natural craving for melody. It is true that they did not make so much noise as the modern instruments, but in revenge they were almost invariably accompanied by a monkey in a little red coat or a performing bear. I always had a secret desire to turn the handle of the organ myself; and when—too late in life to enjoy the full savour of the feat—I persuaded a wandering musician to let me make the experiment, I was surprised to find that it is not so easy as it looks to turn the handle without jerking it, and that the arm of the amateur is weary long before the repertoire of the organ is exhausted. It is told of Mascagni that he once taught an organ-man how to play his notorious Intermezzo to the fullest effect; but I fancy that in professional circles the story would be discredited, for the arm of the practised musician acquires by force of habit a uniform rate of revolution, and in endeavouring to modify that rate he would lose all control over his instrument. Personally, I do not like hearing excerpts from Italian opera on the street-organs, because that is not the kind of music that children can dance to, and it is, after all, in supplying an orchestra for the ballroom of the street that they best justify their existence. The spectacle of little ragged children dancing to the music of the organ is the prettiest and merriest and saddest thing in the world. In France and Belgium they waltz; in England they have invented a curious compound of the reel, the gavotte, and the cakewalk. The best dancers in London are always little Jewesses, and it is worth anybody’s while to go to Whitechapel at midday to see Miriam dancing on the cobbles of Stoney Lane. There is not, as I once thought, a thwarted enchanter shut up inside street-organs who cries out when the handle turns in the small of his back. But why is it that I feel instinctively that magicians have drooping moustaches and insinuating smiles, if it is not that my mind as a child founded its conception of magicians on itinerant musicians? And they weave powerful spells, strong enough to make these poor little atomies forget their birthright of want and foot it like princesses. Children approach their amusements with a gravity beside which the work of a man’s life seems deplorably flippant. A baby toddling round a bandstand is a far more impressive sight than a grown man circumnavigating the world, and children do not smile when they dance—all the laughter is in their feet.