ORGAN-GRINDING WAGER.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 76, 1 April 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

ORGAN-GRINDING WAGER.

A DAY'S TAKINGS AS OUT-OF-WORK

CLERKS

Of the financial possibilities of organgrinding as a means of livelihood, MiHenry S. Penny, a clerk in the Bankruptcy Court, told an interesting story to a 'Daily Mail' representative.

Mr Penny stated that, as the^ result of. a wager made between some fellow-clei'kp : and himself, he and a friend, aMr A. ,T % : Southgate, of the Devonian Club, recently hired a piano organ from Mr Charles Ricci, of 30, Warner-street, Clerkenwell, and with a card bearing the words, 'Kind friends, we are English clerks,' played before appreciative audiences in Old Keiit,,> Road and Peckham. 'It was arranged,' said Mr Penny, 'that we should meet some of the parties to the wager with the organ outside Jonei) ; and Higgins', Peckham. at 8.30 on the appointed day. When we hired the organ of Mr Ricci we paid 2/6 as deposit and another 2/6 when we returned at night, We dressed ourselves in old clothes and shabby straw hats, and, as a. pathetic appeal to the compassion of the public, we had prepared a board, upon which we - stencilled the words, "Kind friends, we are English clerks," but at the last moment we determined to keep the placard ■out of sight while daylight lasted. 'We began playing at half-past two at the rear of the Elephant and Castle Theatre, and during our stay we found ::; the people of the tenements exceedingly sympathetic. From this pitch we took ' about 5/, and then moved on down the New Kent Road, where, falling in with a : 3;:^ one-armed professional organist, WE HAD TEA and a haddock together. After the meal we displayed our board, and started an entertainment outside a block of superior' tenements, at one of the windows of which two girls presented themselves, and gave us sixpence, a cup of tea eacli| t and words of sympathy. 'After five hours of pretty hard and1 fairly profitable work we played outside our first public-house, and here, as I be* lieve is the custom, a tankard of ale was ■■■- sent out to us. At another hotel Mr Southgate went in to make a collect : tion, and a workman standing at the ba£v ■■•:.. asked him to have a drink. Forgetting j.'. his role for the moment, Mr Southgate . replied that he would have a whisky-and-' soda, whereupon the honest toiler said/ "Ooyer gettin' at? You ain't no bloomin' : out o' work; yore on the kid, you are." With some "difficulty he was mollified. Then, with varying fortune, we played at:/. different stands down the Old Kent Road,: and at last reached Peckham, where, at the appointed spot, we met the others inteisested in the wager. After that we set: . out for home. Having returned the or-' , gan, and sett4ed with Ricci, we counted • out the day's takings, and found that, all-, expenses paid, we had £2 1/12 for eight' hours' playing. .'What impressed me most was the^fact . that most of the practical sympathy; came from the poorer classes and not from people of our own station.'