I shall not live to enjoy the fruits of my labors. But I shall die happy, since I have just learned that the Legislature is disposed to treat favorably my projected “Institution for the Musical Education of News Boys.”
As yet I endure more than the torments of the rack, whenever I venture out of doors; and even within doors, it is scarcely better. When I come in, with ears aching from the hideous cries of the street, to pore over the score of a new opera just received from Italy, how am I to provide a remedy for my home miseries?
The “quiet street” which I selected for its retirement, is infested with organ-grinders, who reap a daily harvest among the infantile population for which quiet streets are remarkable. My landlady—worthy Mrs. Squall—has six little Squallets, who delight in hand-organs, and who interrupt my musical waking-dreams of the twilight hour, every day, with appeals for sixpence to give “the new organ-grinder, with his sweet little monkey.”
Since I came into these quarters, a youth, with a pale face and a letter of introduction to recommend him to me, has established himself in the room above me. He has taken to flute-playing! His design is either suicide or murder; and unless the first soon takes place, and his brains are blown out through his instrument, I feel that murder will be the result, and myself the victim.
Across the way dwells a practitioner on the trombone, and twice a week a brass band meets in his room to practice, while again twice a week the choir of —— church assembles next door to me to rehearse for their Sunday performances. Was any one ever plunged into such a combination of horrors?
I have heretofore refrained from giving up this lodging among the fiends, by the presence of Mrs. Squall’s young niece, Rosalie ——. She is young and fresh, fair as a strain from La Dame Blanche, graceful as an air of Mozart, eloquent in speech as one of Mendelssohn’s Lieder Ohne Worte, and symmetrical in figure as a scena from Rossini. She has brown hair, blue eyes, a knowledge of French and Italian, a smattering of the German language, and a thorough knowledge of German wools, $5000 a year, an amiable disposition, and, as I fancy, a decided penchant for me.
I was already nearly on my knees to her this morning, when she suggested that we should sing together, and herself selected the duet “La ci darem la mano,” from Don Giovanni. Such a selection was divine, and I eagerly sought out the opera and began my part, feeling convinced that I should ratify the vows of the song in plain prose and good English as soon as it was over.
I held my breath as I waited for the first tones of what I felt must be an angel’s voice, but what mortal agony could equal mine, when I found her pretensions to divinity all a sham? She sung a full semi-tone above the piano, and with a hard, rasping, metallic voice that grated like a file, and fairly set my teeth on edge.
“Oh! false, false, false Rosalie!”
It is possible that I did not finish the duet as I began it. I had lost all consciousness, except of the horror of my situation, and a sense of a heart crushed in its first and purest affections by a false voice—far worse to me than a false heart.