He scoffed at them as adventures, mountebanks, sideshow riffraff, dime museum freaks; he assailed their showy titles with measureless derision; he said they were back-alley barbers disguised as nobilities, peanut peddlers masquerading as gentlemen,
organ-grinders bereft of their brother monkey.
Even
organ-grinders earn their living, and everyone will see at once that we are different, that we are an honourable and bereaved family reduced to beggary.
It has not the mellifluousness of Italian, Italian is the language of tenors and
organ-grinders, but it has grandeur: it does not ripple like a brook in a garden, but it surges tumultuous like a mighty river in flood."
I sprung myself upon them as a shipwrecked sailor--a sole survivor--stripped in the sea and landed without a stitch--yet they took no more interest in me than you do in Italian
organ-grinders. They were decent enough.
The business of it, the bussel, the smart things you saw, moty cars going by, kerridges, people,
organ-grinders, German bands.
His eye was caught by a building of pale-blue tin, stencilled "Calvinist Chapel," before whose shuttered windows an Italian
organ-grinder .with a petticoated monkey was playing "Dolly Grey-"
Why, an
organ-grinder whom I met in Gorokhovaia Street would inspire more respect than they do, for at least he walks about all day, and suffers hunger--at least he looks for a stray, superfluous groat to earn him subsistence, and is, therefore, a true gentleman, in that he supports himself.
The
organ-grinder got awfully angry and said that he wanted to keep the monkey.
A poor tired Italian
organ-grinder, tramping with an equally tired monkey along the dusty roads, had to be bought off in a similar manner,--though he only cost sixpence.
Bernard, and the old man was trying to look like he wouldn't have murdered the first
organ-grinder he heard play Mendelssohn's wedding-march, I looked up at him and said, in my way:
organ-grinder - a street musician who plays a hand organ or hurdy-gurdy