Part 26

Prominent among the street musicians are the organ grinders, who in former days monopolized the business. They are mostly Italians, though one sees among them Germans, Frenchmen, Swiss, and even Englishmen and Irishmen. Against these people there seems to be an especial, and a not very reasonable prejudice. A lady, eminent for her good deeds among the poor of the Five Points, once said, "There is no reason why an organ grinder should be regarded as an altogether discreditable member of the community; his vocation is better than that of begging, and he certainly works hard enough for the pennies thrown to him, lugging his big box around the city from morning until night." To this good word for the organ grinder it may be added that he is generally an inoffensive person, who attends closely to his business during the day, and rarely ever falls into the hands of the police. Furthermore, however much grown people with musical tastes may be annoyed, the organ grinders furnish an immense amount of amusement and pleasure to the children; and in some of the more wretched sections provide all the music that the little ones ever hear.

Very few of them own their organs. There are several firms in the city who manufacture or import hand organs, and from these the majority of the grinders rent their instruments. The rent varies from two to twenty dollars per month, the last sum being paid for the French flute organs, which are the best. The owners of the instruments generally manage to inspire the grinders with a profound terror of them, so that few instruments are carried off unlawfully, and, after all, the organ grinders are more unfortunate than dishonest.

Organ grinding in New York was once a very profitable business, and even now pays well in some instances. Some of the grinding fraternity have made money. One of these was Francisco Ferrari, who came to this city ten years ago. He invested the money he brought with him in a hand organ and a monkey, and in about five years made money enough to return to Italy and purchase a small farm. He was not content in his native land, however, and soon returned to New York with his family and resumed his old trade. He is said to be worth about twenty thousand dollars.

At present, in fair weather, a man with a good flute organ can generally make from two to five dollars a day. Those who have the best and sweetest toned instruments seek the better neighborhoods, where they are always sure of an audience of children whose parents pay well. Some of these musicians earn as much as ten and fifteen dollars in a single day. In bad weather, however, they are forced to be idle, as a good organ cannot be exposed to the weather at such times without being injured.

A monkey is a great advantage to the grinder, as the animal, if clever, is sure to draw out a host of pennies from the crowd which never fails to gather around it. The monkey is generally the property of the grinder. It is his pet, and it is interesting to see the amount of affection which exists between the two. If the grinder is a married man, or has a daughter or sister, she generally accompanies him in his rounds. Sometimes girls and women make regular business engagements of this kind with the grinders, and receive for their services in beating the tambourine, or soliciting money from the bystanders, a certain fixed proportion of the earnings of the day.

If the organ grinder be successful in his business, he has every opportunity for saving his money. Apart from the rent of his organ, his expenses are slight. Few, however, save very much, as but few are able to earn the large sums we have mentioned. The grinders pay from five to eight dollars per month for their rooms, and they and their families live principally upon macaroni. They use but a single room for all purposes, and, no matter how many are to be provided with sleeping accommodations, manage to get along in some way. As a general rule, they are better off here than they were in their own country, for poverty has been their lot in both. Their wants are simple, and they can live comfortably on an amazingly small sum. The better class of Italians keep their apartments as neat as possible. Children of a genial clime, they are fond of warmth, and the temperature of their rooms stands at a stage which would suffocate an American. They are very exclusive, and herd by themselves in a section of the Five Points. Baxter and Park and the adjoining streets are taken up to a great extent with Italians.

This is the life of the fortunate members of the class. There are many, however, who are not so lucky. These are the owners or renters of the majority of the street organs, the vile, discordant instruments which set all of one's nerves a tingling. They earn comparatively little, and are not tolerated by the irate householders whose tastes they offend. The police treat them with but small consideration. The poor wretches are nearly always in want, and soon full into vagrancy, and some into vice and crime. Some of them are worthless vagabonds, and nearly all the Italians accused of crime in the city are included in their number. One of these men is to be seen on the Bowery at almost any time. He seats himself on the pavement, with his legs tucked under him, and turns the crank of an instrument which seems to be a doleful compromise between a music box and an accordion. In front of this machine is a tin box for pennies, and by the side of it is a card on which is printed an appeal to the charitable. At night a flickering tallow dip sheds a dismal glare around. The man's head is tied up in a piece of white muslin, his eyes are closed, and his face and posture are expressive of the most intense misery. He turns the crank slowly, and the organ groans and moans in the most ludicrously mournful manner. At one side of the queer instrument sits a woman with a babe at her breast, on the other side sits a little boy, and a second boy squats on the ground in front. Not a sound is uttered by any of the group, who are arranged with genuine skill. Their whole attitude is expressive of the most fearful misery. The groans of the organ cannot fail to attract attention, and there are few kind-hearted persons who can resist the sight. Their pennies and ten-cent stamps are showered into the tin box, which is never allowed to contain more than two or three pennies. The man is an Italian, and is said by the police to be a worthless vagabond. Yet he is one of the most successful musicians of his class in the city.

The arrangements of a street organ being entirely automatic, any one who can turn a crank can manage one of these instruments. Another class of street musicians are required to possess a certain amount of musical skill in order to be successful. These are the strolling harpers and violinists. Like the organ grinders, they are Italians. Very few of them earn much money, and the majority live in want and misery.

Some of these strollers are men, or half-grown youths, and are excellent performers. The best of them frequent Broadway, Wall and Broad streets, and the up-town neighborhoods. At night they haunt the localities of the hotels. They constitute one of the pleasantest features of the street, for their music is good and well worth listening to. They generally reap a harvest of pennies and fractional currency. They form the aristocratic portion of the street minstrel class, and are the envy of their less fortunate rivals.

The vast majority of the strolling harpers and violinists are children; generally boys below the age of sixteen. They are chiefly Italians, though a few Swiss, French and Germans are to be found among them. They are commonly to be found in the streets in pairs; but sometimes three work together, and again only one is to be found. There are several hundreds of these children on the streets. Dirty, wan, shrunken, monkey-faced little creatures they are. Between them and other children lies a deep gulf, across which they gaze wistfully at the sports and joys that may not be theirs. All day long, and late into the night, they must ply their dreary trade.

Although natives of the land of song, they have little or no musical talent, as a class, and the majority of them are furnished with harps and violins from which not even Orpheus himself could bring harmony. Not a few of the little ones endeavor to make up in dancing what they lack in musical skill. They work energetically at their instruments, but they do no more than produce the vilest discord. At the best, their music is worthless, and their voices have a cracked, harsh, monotonous sound; but the sound of them is also very sad, and often brings a penny into the outstretched hand.

At all hours of the day, and until late at night you may hear their music along the street, and listen to their sad young voices going up to the ear that is always open to them. They are half clothed, half fed, and their filthiness is painful to behold. They sleep in fair weather under a door-step or in some passage way or cellar, or in a box or hogshead on the street, and in the winter huddle together in the cold and darkness of their sleeping places, for we cannot call them homes, and long for the morning to come. The cold weather is very hard upon them, they love the warm sunshine, and during the season of ice and snow are in a constant state of semi-torpor. You see them on the street, in their thin, ragged garments, so much overpowered by the cold that they can scarcely strike or utter a note. Sometimes a kind-hearted saloon-keeper will permit them to warm themselves at his stove for a moment or two. These are the bright periods in their dark lives, for as a general rule they are forced to remain on the street from early morning until late at night.

A recent writer, well informed on the subject, says: "It is a cruelty to encourage these children with a gift of money, for instead of such gifts inuring to their benefit, they are extracted for the support of cruel and selfish parents and taskmasters." This is true, but the gift is a benefit to the child, nevertheless. These children have parents or relatives engaged in the same business, who require them to bring in a certain sum of money at the end of the day, and if they do not make up the amount they are received with blows and curses, and are refused the meagre suppers of which they are so much in need, or are turned into the streets to pass the night. The poor little wretches come crowding into the Five Points from nine o'clock until midnight, staggering under their heavy harps, those who have not made up the required sum sobbing bitterly in anticipation of the treatment in store for them. Give them a penny or two, should they ask it, reader. You will not miss it. It will go to the brutal parent or taskmaster, it is true, but it will give the little monkey-faced minstrel a supper, and save him from a beating. It is more to them than to you, and it will do you no harm for the recording angel to write opposite the follies and sins of your life, that you cast one gleam of sunshine into the heart of one of these children.

A number of Italian gentlemen resident in New York have generously devoted themselves to the task of bettering the lot of these little ones, and many of those who formerly lived on the streets are now in attendance upon the Italian schools of the city. Yet great is the suffering amongst those who have not been reached by these efforts. Only one or two years ago there were several wretches living in the city who carried on a regular business of importing children from Tuscany and Naples, and putting them on the streets here as beggars, musicians, and thieves. They half starved the little creatures, and forced them to steal as well as beg, and converted the girls into outcasts at the earliest possible age. The newspapers at length obtained information respecting these practices, and by exposing them, drew the attention of the civil authorities to them. One of the scoundrels, named Antonelli, was arrested, tried, and sentenced to the penitentiary, and the infamous business was broken up. The police authorities are possessed of information which justifies them in asserting that some Italian children fare quite as badly at the hands of their own parents. There have been several instances where Italian fathers have made a practice of hiring out their daughters for purposes of prostitution, while they were yet mere children.

As a rule, the future of these little folks is very sad. The Italian and the Mission schools in the Five Points and similar sections of the city are doing much for them, but the vast majority are growing up in ignorance. Without education, with an early and constant familiarity with want, misery, brutality and crime, the little minstrels rarely "come to any good." The girls grow up to lives of sin and shame, and many fortunately die young. The boys too often become thieves, vagrants, and assassins. Everybody condemns them. They are forced onward in their sad career by all the machinery of modern civilization, and they are helpless to ward off their ruin.

During one of the heavy snows of a recent winter, a child harper trudged wearily down the Fifth avenue, on his way to the Five Points, where he was to pass the night. It was intensely cold, and the little fellow's strength was so exhausted by fatigue and the bleak night wind that he staggered under the weight of his harp. At length he sat down on the steps of a splendid mansion to rest himself. The house was brilliantly lighted, and he looked around timidly as he seated himself, expecting the usual command to move off. No one noticed him, however, and he leaned wearily against the balustrade, and gazed at the handsome windows through which the rich, warm light streamed out into the wintry air. As he sat there, strains of exquisite music, and the sounds of dancing, floated out into the night. The little fellow clasped his hands in ecstasy and listened. He had never heard such melody, and it made his heart ache to think how poor and mean was his own minstrelsy compared with that with which his ears were now ravished. The wind blew fierce and keen down the grand street, whirling the snow about in blinding clouds, but the boy neither saw nor heard the strife of the elements. He heard only the exquisite melody that came floating out to him from the warm, luxurious mansion, and which grew sweeter and richer every moment. The cold, hard street became more and more indistinct to him, and he sat very still with his hands clasped and his eyes closed.

The ball ended towards the small hours of the morning, and the clatter of carriages dashing up to the door of the mansion gave the signal to the guests that it was time to depart. No one had seen the odd-looking bundle that lay on the street steps, half buried in the snow, and which might have lain there until the morning had not some one stumbled over it in descending to the carriages. With a half curse, one of the men stooped down to examine the strange object, and found that the bundle of rags and filth contained the unconscious form of a child. The harp, which lay beside him, told his story. He was one of the little outcasts of the streets. Scorning to handle such an object, the man touched him with his foot to arouse him, thinking he had fallen asleep. Alas! it was the eternal sleep.

XX. THE CENTRAL PARK.

Though of comparatively recent date, the Central Park, the chief pleasure ground of New York, has reached a degree of perfection in the beauty and variety of its attractions, that has made it an object of pride with the citizens of the metropolis.

For many years previous to its commencement, the want of a park was severely felt in New York. There was literally no place on the island where the people could obtain fresh air and pleasant exercise. Harlem lane and the Bloomingdale road were dusty and disagreeable, and moreover were open only to those who could afford the expense of keeping or hiring a conveyance. People of moderate means, and the laboring classes were obliged to leave the city to obtain such recreation. All classes agreed that a park was a necessity, and all were aware that such a place of resort would have to be constructed by artificial means.

The first step taken in the matter was by Mayor Kingsland, who, on the 5th of April 1851, submitted a message to the Common Council, setting forth the necessity of a park, and urging that measures be taken at once for securing a suitable site, before the island should be covered with streets and buildings. The message was referred to a select committee, who reported in favor of purchasing a tract of 150 acres, known as Jones's Woods, lying between Sixty-sixth and Seventy-fifth streets, and Third avenue and the East River. There was a strong pressure brought to bear upon the City Government to secure the purchase of this tract, although the citizens as a rule ridiculed the idea of providing a park of only 150 acres for a city whose population would soon be 1,000,000. Yet the Jones's Wood tract came very near being decided upon, and the purchase was only prevented by a quarrel between two members of the Legislature from the City of New York, and the city was saved from a mistake which would have been fatal to its hopes. On the 5th of August, 1851, a committee was appointed by the Legislature to examine whether a more suitable location for a park could be found, and the result of the inquiry was the selection and purchase of the site now known as the Central Park, the bill for that purpose passing the Legislature on the 23d of July, 1853.

[Picture: VIEW FROM THE UPPER TERRACE.]

In November, 1853, Commissioners were appointed to assess the value of the land taken for the park, and on the 5th of February, 1856, their report was confirmed by the City Government. In May, 1856, the Common Council appointed the first Board of Commissioners, with power to select and carry out a definite plan for the construction of the park. This Board consisted of the Mayor and Street Commissioner, who were _ex officio_ members, Washington Irving, George Bancroft, James E. Cooley, Charles F. Briggs, James Phalen, Charles A. Dana, Stewart Brown and others. The designs submitted by Messrs. Frederick L. Olmstead and C. Vaux were accepted, and have since been substantially carried out. The surveys had previously been made by a corps of engineers, at the head of which was Mr., now General Egbert L. Viele.

The task before the architects and Commissioners was an arduous one. With the exception of making a few hollows, and throwing up a few rocks and bluffs, nature had done nothing for this part of the island. It was bleak, dreary and sickly. "The southern portion was already a part of the straggling suburbs of the city, and a suburb more filthy, squalid and disgusting can hardly be imagined. A considerable number of its inhabitants were engaged in occupations which are nuisances in the eye of the law; and were consequently followed at night in wretched hovels, half-hidden among the rocks, where also heaps of cinders, brickbats, potsherds, and other rubbish were deposited. The grading of streets through and across it had been commenced, and the rude embankments and ragged rock-excavations thus created added much to the natural irregularities of its surface. Large reaches of stagnant water made the aspect yet more repulsive; and so ubiquitous were the rocks that it is said, not a square rood could be found throughout which a crowbar could be thrust its length into the ground without encountering them. To complete the miseries of the scene, the wretched squatters had, in the process of time, ruthlessly denuded it of all its vegetation except a miserable tangled underbrush."

Looking around now upon the beautiful landscape, with its exquisite lawns and shrubbery, its picturesque hills, and romantic walks and drives, its sparkling lakes, cascades and fountains, it is hard to realize that so much loveliness was preceded by such hideousness.

[Picture: FOOT-BRIDGE IN CENTRAL PARK.]

The Central Park, so called because it is situated almost in the centre of the island of Manhattan, is a parallelogram in shape, and lies between Fifty-ninth street on the south, and One-hundred-and-tenth street on the north, the Fifth avenue on the east, and the Eighth avenue on the west. It covers an area of 843 acres, and is about two and a half miles long, by half a mile wide. There are nine miles of carriage drives, four miles of bridle roads, and twenty-five miles of walks within its limits. It is the second park in the Union in size; the Fairmount Park at Philadelphia being the largest. It is larger than any city park in Europe, with the exception of the Bois de Boulogne at Paris, the Prater at Vienna, and the Phoenix at Dublin. A rocky ridge, which traverses the whole island, passes through almost the exact centre of the grounds, and has afforded a means of rendering the scenery most beautiful and diversified. A part of the grounds forms a miniature Alpine region; another part is the perfection of water scenery; and still another stretches away in one of the loveliest lawns in the world. The soil will nurture almost any kind of tree, shrub, or plant; and more than one hundred and sixty thousand trees and shrubs of all kinds have been planted, and the work is still going on. Any of the principal walks will conduct the visitor all over the grounds, and afford him a fine view of the principal objects of interest.

The park is divided into two main sections, known as the Upper and Lower Parks, the two being separated by the immense Croton Reservoirs, which occupy the central portion of the grounds. Thus far the Lower Park has received the greatest amount of ornamentation. It is a miracle of exquisite landscape gardening. Its principal features are its lawns, the Pond, the Lake, the Mall, the Terrace, the Ramble, and the Museum of Natural History. The main entrances are on Fifty-ninth street, those at the Fifth and Eighth avenues being for vehicles, equestrians, and pedestrians, and those at the Sixth and Seventh avenues for pedestrians only. All these entrances will ultimately be ornamented with magnificent gateways. Paths leading from them converge at the handsome Marble Arch at the lower end of the Mall.