The Golden Scarecrow by Sir Hugh Walpole
page 26 of 207 (12%)
page 26 of 207 (12%)
|
have not utterly destroyed. All the oldest London mendicants find their
way, at different hours of the week, up and down the Square. There is, I believe, no other square in London where musicians are permitted. On Monday morning there is the blind man with the black patch over one eye; he has an organ (a very old one, with a painted picture of the Battle of Trafalgar on the front of it) and he wears an old black skull-cap. He wheezes out his old tunes (they are older than other tunes that March Square hears, and so, perhaps, March Square loves them). He goes despondently, and the tap of his stick sounds all the way round the Square. A small and dirty boy--his grandson, maybe--pushes the organ for him. On Tuesday there comes the remnants of a German band--remnants because now there are only the cornet, the flute and the trumpet. Sadly wind-blown, drunken and diseased they are, and the Square can remember when there were a number of them, hale and hearty young fellows, but drink and competition have been too strong for them. On Wednesdays there is sometimes a lady who sings ballads in a voice that can only be described as that contradiction in terms "a shrill contralto." Her notes are very piercing and can be heard from one end of the Square to the other. She sings "Annie Laurie" and "Robin Adair," and wears a battered hat of black straw. On Thursday there is a handsome Italian with a barrel organ that bears in its belly the very latest and most popular tunes. It is on Thursday that the Square learns the music of the moment; thus from one end of the year to the other does it keep pace with the movement. On Fridays there is a lean and ragged man wearing large and, to the children of the Square, terrifying spectacles. He is a very gloomy fellow and sings hymn-tunes, "Rock of Ages," "There is a Happy Land," and "Jerusalem the Golden." On Saturdays there is a stout, happy little man with a harp. He has white hair and looks like a retired colonel. He |
|