The Organ of Life
Almost always In London—in the congregated uproar of streets, or in the noise that drifts through wails and windows—you can hear the hackneyed melancholy of street music; a music which sounds like the actual voice of the human Heart, singing the lost joys, the regrets, the loveless lives of the people who blacken the pavements, or jolt along on the busses.
“Speak to me kindly,” the hand-organ implores; “I’m all alone!” it screams amid the throng; “thy Vows are all broken,” it laments in dingy courtyards, “And light is thy Fame.” And of hot summer afternoons, the Cry for Courage to Remember, or Calmness to Forget, floats in with the smell of paint and asphalt—faint and sad—through open office windows.