A LITTLE MORE HARMONY.

STILL must I hear! Shall the hoarse
peripatetic ballad-singer bawl the creaking
couplets of The Low-backed Car beneath my
window; shall the summer breeze waft the
strains of Pop Goes the Weasel upon my
ears, and drive me to confusion, while I am
endeavouring to master the difficulties of the
Turkish alphabet; shall the passing butcher-boy
rattle his bones, and the theological
beggar-man torture a psalm tune into
dolorous cadences; shall the young lady in the
apartment next to mine string my nerves
into the rigours, while she is practising Les
Souvenirs de Cracovie, with that ceaseless
verbal accompaniment of one, and two, and
three; one, and two, and three! Shall music
in some shape or other resound from the
distant costermonger and the proximate street
boy; the brooding swallows sitting upon the
eaves, and showing me their sunny backs;
the ill-ground organ in the next street; and
the beaten tom-tom and execrable
caterwauling of Howadjee Lall from Bombay! To
say nothing of the deep-mouthed dog next
door; the parrot at number eight which is
always endeavouring to whistle II Segreto,
and always trying back, and never succeeds
in accomplishing more of the air than the
first three-quarters of a bar; and Colonel
Chumpfist's man servant over the way, who,
sings valorously while he cleans his
master's boots in the area! I say, shall all these
things be, and I not sing, lest haply my
readers think they have already had enough
and to spare, of my musical reminiscences!
No: the Musical World shall be again my
theme,—a little more harmony my song.

I will take a morning concert. Say one
given in the height of the season by Signer
Papadaggi, the famous singing master.
Papadaggi is a little man, but he has done great
things. Twenty years ago he came to
England from Leghorn very poor and humble.
He dwelt in the neighbourhood of Golden
Square in those days; smelt of smoke; was
not without a strong suspicion of garlic; had
many button-up or cloudy linen days, when
he slunk rather than walked under the
defunct Quadrant colonnade, and made a
tremendous deal of a clean shirt when he
mounted one. Papadaggi was very hairy
then, and dined off grease, and was hand and
glove with Eiffi the bass, and Puiffi the tenor,
and Taggragati the piccolo player. He does
not know Eiffi or Baffi now. He was very
down, financially speaking, when Lor Brown,
banquier of the city, took him up and into
Belgravia. This laid the foundation of
Papadaggi's fortune; but the superstructure was
of his own erection. His brightest of his
Lamps of Architecture was this—he shaved.
There was, as you are aware, previous
to that momentous question Why Shave?
being asked in these pages, an almost
insurmountable prejudice among English
respectability against beards and
moustaches. These hirsute appendages seemed
always connected in the minds of the
British Pater- and Mater-familias with dirt,
revolution, immorality, poverty, atheism, and
non-payment of rent. Every great singer,
artist, or musician, who happened to be the
rage, might barely be tolerated in wearing a
beard, just as a captain in the Life Guards or
a traveller just returned from the interior of
Dahomey might be; but to the unknown, the
poor, the struggling, the ambitious abnegation
of the razor was fatal. Papadaggi was wise
in his generation, and shaved. Not to an
utter state of barefacedness, however, for he
left his whiskers, which were neatly trimmed
into a conical form, and lay on his cheeks like
black mutton-chops. These whiskers were the
making of Papadaggi. He was no longer a
confounded foreigner. He went into the best
houses, and taught the flower of the British
aristocracy and moneyocracy. In the banking
world he is amazingly popular.
Roehampton, Putney, and Ham Common, where
bankers' villas most do congregate, will hear
of no other music master than Papadaggi.
He has long since abandoned the confoundedly
foreign prefix of Signor, and has Mr. I. Papadaggi,
printed on his cards. When I state that
he is a director of two assurance companies,
has recently been elected a member of the
Mousaion Club, and has lately taken to wearing
a white neckcloth in the daytime, the
conclusion will easily be arrived at that he
has a comfortable balance at his banker's, and
is a highly respectable man.

Papadaggi married an English lady, Miss
Hammernell, of Birmingham, and though of
the pontifical faith himself, will send his son