It is easy to recognise the rule adopted in the distribution of the
instruments among the grinders: the stoutest fellow, or he who can
take the best care of it, gets the best piano; while the shattered and
rickety machine goes to the urchin of ten or twelve, who can scarcely
drag it a hundred yards without resting. It is to be supposed that the
instruments are all rated according to their quality. There is at this
moment wandering about the streets of London a singular and pitiable
object, whose wretched lot must be known to hundreds of thousands, and
who affords in his own person good evidence of the strictness of the
rule above alluded to, as well as of the rigour with which the trade
is carried on. We refer to a ragged, shirtless, and harmlessly insane
Italian lad, who, under the guardianship of one of the piano-mongers,
is driven forth daily into the streets, carrying a blackened and
gutted, old piano-case, in which two strings only of the original
scale remain unbroken. The poor unwashed innocent transports himself
as quickly as possible to the genteelest neighbourhood he can find,
and with all the enthusiasm of a Jullien, commences his monotonous
grind. Three turns of the handle, and the all but defunct instrument
ejaculates 'tink;' six more inaudible turns, and then the responding
string answers 'tank.' 'Tink--tank' is the sum-total of his
performance, to any defects in which he is as insensible as a blind
man is to colour. As a matter of course, he gets ill-treated, mobbed,
pushed about, and upset by the blackguard scamps about town; and were
it not for the police, who have rescued him times without number from
the hands of his persecutors, he would long ere now have been reduced
to as complete a ruin as his instrument. In one respect, he is indeed
already worse off than the dilapidated piano: he is dumb as well as
silly, and can only utter one sound--a cry of alarm of singular
intensity; this cry forms the climax of pleasure to the wretches who
dog his steps, and this, unmoved by his silent tears and woful looks,