After the first and second
floor have been out in the bright street dressed in all their
splendors, shall not our humble friends in the basement have their
holiday, and the cotton velvet and the thin-skinned jewelry--simple
adornments, but befitting the station of those who wear them--show
themselves to the crowd, who think them beautiful, as they ought
to, though the people up stairs know that they are cheap and
perishable?
- I don't know that I may not bring the Poet here, some day or
other, and let him speak for himself. Still I think I can tell you
what he says quite as well as he could do it.--Oh,--he said to me,
one day,--I am but a hand-organ man,--say rather, a hand-organ.
Life turns the winch, and fancy or accident pulls out the stops. I
come under your windows, some fine spring morning, and play you one
of my adagio movements, and some of you say,--This is good,--play
us so always. But, dear friends, if I did not change the stop
sometimes, the machine would wear out in one part and rust in
another. How easily this or that tune flows!--you say,--there must
be no end of just such melodies in him.--I will open the poor
machine for you one moment, and you shall look.--Ah! Every note
marks where a spur of steel has been driven in. It is easy to
grind out the song, but to plant these bristling points which make
it was the painful task of time.
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