The melody, so plaintive and cloying as a vocal performance, leaped
forward briskly enough under the rapid lashings to and fro of the crank;
the elbow of the organist moved with a swift rhythm as his searching eye
tried vainly to wring a penny or two from some one of all these opulent
facades. "Good Heaven!" cried Truesdale; "how little feeling, how little
expression! Here," he said to the man in Italian; "take this half lira
and let _me_ have a chance. Bellini was never meant to go like that."

The man, with a cheerful grin, yielded up his instrument to this engaging
youth who was able to address him so pointedly in his own language, and
Truesdale, with his eye on his aunt's upper windows, proceeded to indulge
himself in a realization of his ideal. His aunt was vastly susceptible to
music, and he would heap upon her (in the absence of any other) all those
passionate reproaches for cruelty and faithlessness proper to the
role--welling crescendos and plaintive diminuendos and long, slow
rallentandos, followed quickly by panting and impassioned accelerandos.
In other words, he would show this music-cobbler the possibilities of his
instrument and the emotional capacity of the human soul. Incidentally, he
should earn his cup of tea.


"Why, oh why do I strive in vain to h-a-te thee,
Cruel creature, as deeply as I would?"


began Truesdale, blithely, with his eye on the one window whose shade was
not completely lowered. But at the third or fourth measure he paused
disconcerted. He had adopted a varying rhythm to express each last fine
shade of the text, and the air was already littered with abrupt and
disjointed phrases which began with a quick snarl or with a prolonged