ample, as this
present season's, which is happily styled "the devil's fiddle," or
"the chicken-box," whose simplest form is an emptied tomato-can, with
a string passed through the end and pulled with the rosined fingers.
Now, that a man may be pleased with a rattle, even if it be only a
car-rattle, is conceivable, but it is hard to understand how he can
retain a relish for the squeal of a locomotive-whistle. The practice
of summoning workmen to factories by this shrill monitor, of using
it to announce the dinner-hour, the hour of resuming work after the
nooning, and the hour of quitting work for the night, ought to be
abolished everywhere. There is not the faintest excuse for it, because
clocks and bells will do the same work exactly as well. On the other
hand, the whistle causes perpetual irritation to the nervous, feeble
and sick, and frequent cases of horses running away with fright at the
sudden shriek, smashing property or destroying life.

Let us give moral aid and comfort to the campaign, Cisatlantic and
Transatlantic, against the steam-whistle. In the local councils of
Philadelphia, Camden and other cities it has been well opened in our
country; in the House of Commons has been introduced a bill providing
that "no person shall use or employ in any manufactory or any other
place any steam-whistle or steam-trumpet for the purpose of summoning
or dismissing workmen or persons employed, without the sanction of the
sanitary authorities." They call this whistle, by the way, it
would seem, the "American devil," for the Manchester _Examiner_
congratulates its readers that the "American devil" has been taken by
the throat, and ere long his yells will be heard no more.

John Leech, it is said, was actually driven from house to house in
a vain effort to escape the nuisance of organ-grinders, whom he has
immortalized in Punch by many exquisite sketches, showing that they
know "the vally of peace and quietness." Some of his friends declare
that this nuisance so worked on his nerves that he may be said to
have died of organ-grinders. Holmes has immortalized the same guild of
wandering minstrels as a sort of "crusaders sent from infernal clime
to dock the ears of melody and break the legs of time." And yet the
hand-organ, so often the subject of municipal legislation, is dulcet
music compared with the steam-whistle, even when the latter instrument
takes its most ambitiously artistic form of the "Calliope."

SIAMESE NE