riot of your youth, you have
leased a hurdy-gurdy for a dollar and with other devils of your kind gone
forth to seek your fortune. It's in noisier fashion than when Goldsmith
played the flute through France for board and bed. If you turned the
handle slowly and fast by jerks you attained a rare tempo that drew
attention from even the most stolid windows. But as music it was as
naught.

Down the street--it being now noon and the day Monday--Mrs. Y's washing
will be out to dry. Observe her gaunt replica, _cap-a-pie_, as immodest as
an advertisement! In her proper person she is prodigal if she unmask her
beauty to the moon. And in company with this, is the woolen semblance of
her plump husband. Neither of them is shap'd for sportive tricks: But look
upon them when the music starts! Hand in hand upon the line, as is proper
for married folk, heel and toe together, one, two, and a one, two, three.
It is the hurdy-gurdy that calls to life such revelry. The polka has come
to its own again.

Yet despite this evidence that the hurdy-gurdy sets the world to
dancing--like the fiddle in the Turkish tale where even the headsman
forgot his business--despite such evidence there are persons who affect to
despise its melody. These claim such perceptivity of the outer ear and
such fineness of the channels that the tune is but a clack when it gets
inside. God pity such! I'll not write a word of them.

A spring day is at its best about noon. I thrust this in the teeth of
those who prefer the dawn or the coming on of night. At noon there are
more yellow wheels upon the street. The hammering on sheds is at its
loudest as the time for lunch comes near. More grocers' carts are rattling
on their business. There is a better chance that a load of green
wheelbarrows may go by, or a wagon of red rhubarb. Then, too, the air is
so warm that even decrepitude fumbles on the porch and down the steps,
with a cane to poke the weeds.

If you have luck, you may see a "cullud pusson" pushing a whitewash cart
with altruistic intent toward all dusky surfaces except his own. Or maybe
he has nice appreciation of what color contrasts he himself presents when
the work is midway. If he wear the faded memory of a silk hat, it's the
better picture.

But also the schools are out and the joy of life is hissing up a hundred
gullets. Baseball has now a fierceness it lacks at the end of day. There
is wild demand that "Shorty, soak 'er home!" "Butter-fingers!" is a ha