Phil, the Fiddler
PHIL, THE FIDDLER By Horatio Alger, Jr. PREFACE Among the most interesting and picturesque classes of street children in New York are the young Italian musicians, who wander about our streets with harps, violins, or tambourines, playing wherever they can secure an audience. They become Americanized less easily than children of other nationalities, and both in dress and outward appearance retain their foreign look, while few, even after several years' residence, acquire even a passable knowledge of the English language. In undertaking, therefore, to describe this phase of street life, I found, at the outset, unusual difficulty on account of my inadequate information. But I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of
societies, building associations, and the use of banks for savings,
instead of the dram-sellers' banks for losings, would do more for the
well-being of our working classes than all the trades-unions or labor
combinations, that ever have or ever will exist. The laboring man's
protective union lies in his own good common sense, united with
temperance, self-denial and economy. There are very many in our land who
know this way; and their condition, as compared with those who know it
not, or knowing, will not walk therein, is found to be in striking
contrast.
TAXATION.
Besides the wasting drain for drink, and the loss in national wealth,
growing out of the idleness and diminished power for work, that
invariably follows the use of alcohol in any of its forms, the people
are heavily taxed for the repression and punishment of crimes, and the
support of paupers and destitute children. A fact or two will give the
reader some idea of what this enormous cost must be. In "The Twentieth
Annual Report of the Executive Committee of the Prison Association of
New York," is this sentence: "There can be no doubt that, of all the
proximate sources of crime, the use of intoxicating liquors is the most
prolific and the most deadly. Of other causes it may be said that they
slay their thousands; of this it may be acknowledged that it slays its
tens of thousands. The committee asked for the opinion of the jail
officers in nearly every county in the State as to the proportion of
PHIL, THE FIDDLER By Horatio Alger, Jr. PREFACE Among the most interesting and picturesque classes of street children in New York are the young Italian musicians, who wander about our streets with harps, violins, or tambourines, playing wherever they can secure an audience. They become Americanized less easily than children of other nationalities, and both in dress and outward appearance retain their foreign look, while few, even after several years' residence, acquire even a passable knowledge of the English language. In undertaking, therefore, to describe this phase of street life, I found, at the outset, unusual difficulty on account of my inadequate information. But I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of