When I was quite a tiny mite, And life a joyful ditty, I used to know a poor old wight Who fiddled through the city. Alas! it’s thirty years ago— Time _is_ so quaint and flighty! And now I’ve mites myself, you know, And not so very mighty. And he’s unvexed by flat and sharp; He’s guessed the awful riddle, And, haply, got a golden harp In place of that old fiddle.
And yet, methinks, I see him now— So clear the memory lingers— His long grey hair, his puckered brow, His trembling, grimy fingers, The comforter that dangled down Beyond his waist a long way, The beaver hat with battered crown, He’d pause to brush—the wrong way, The brown surtout that still could brag Its buttons down the middle, And, crowning all, the greenish bag That held the sacred fiddle.
Two tunes he played, and only two, One over, one beginning; “God Save the Queen’s” collapse we knew Was “Kitty Clover’s” inning. How startlingly the bow behaved— Curveted, jerked, and bounded— The while our gracious queen was saved, And knavish tricks confounded! And oh! the helpless, hopeless woe, Brimful and running over, In (_very_ slow) the o—o—oh Of bothering Kitty Clover!
And so he’d jerk and file and squeak Like twenty thousand hinges, While every sympathetic cheek Was racked with shoots and twinges. The lawyer left his lease or will, The workman stopped his hammer, The druggist ceased to roll the pill, And ran to calm the clamor. From doors and windows jingled down A dancing shower of copper, Accompanied by many a frown, And sometimes speech improper.
He gathered up the grudging dole, And sought a different station, But always with a bitter soul, And deep humiliation. For what though music win you pence, If praise it fail to win you? If fees are paid to hurry hence, And never to continue? “Bad times for art,” he’d sometimes say To any youthful scholar; “They’d rather grub for brass to-day, Than listen to Apoller.”
And so with quaint, pathetic face, Aggrieved and disappointed, The minstrel moved from place to place, And mourned the times disjointed. His hat was browner than of yore, His grizzled head was greyer, And none had ever cried “Encore,” Or praised the poor old player. I came to feel (and was not wrong)— His day was nearly over— He’d not be bothered very long By cruel Kitty Clover.