The Itinerant Musician.

A WANDERING son of Apollo, with a shocking bad hat, encircled by a melancholy piece of rusty crape, and arrayed in garments that had once shone with renovated splendour in that mart of second-hand habiliments 'ycleped Monmouth-street, was affrighting the echoes of a fashionable street by blowing upon an old clarionet, and doing the 'Follow, hark!' of Weber the most palpable injustice.

The red hand of the greasy cook tapped at the kitchen-window below, and she scolded inaudibly—but he still continued to amuse—himself, as regardless of the cook's scolding as of the area-railing against which he leaned, tuning his discordant lay.

His strain indeed appeared endless, and he still persevered in torturing the ambient air with, apparently, as little prospect of blowing himself out as an asthmatic man would possibly have of extinguishing a smoky link with a wheeze—or a hungry cadger without a penny!

The master of the mansion was suffering under a touch of the gout, accompanied by a gnawing tooth-ache!—The horrid noise without made his trembling nerves jangle like the loose strings of an untuned guitar.

A furious tug at the bell brought down the silken rope and brought up an orbicular footman.

“William”

“Yes, sir.”

“D—— that, etc.! and send him to, etc.!”

“Yes, sir.”

And away glided the liveried rotundity.—

Appearing at the street-door, the musician took his instrument from his lips, and, approaching the steps, touched his sorry beaver with the side of his left hand.

“There's three-pence for you,” said the menial, “and master wishes you'd move on.”

“Threepence, indeed!” mumbled the man. “I never moves on under sixpence: d'ye think I doesn't know the walley o' peace and quietness?”

“Fellow!” cried the irate footman, with a pompous air—“Master desires as you'll go on.”

“Werry well”—replied the other, touching his hat, while the domestic waddled back, and closed the door, pluming himself upon having settled the musician; but he had no sooner vanished, than the strain was taken up again more uproariously than ever.

Out he rushed again in a twinkling—

“Fellow! I say—man! vot do you mean?”

“Vy, now didn't you tell me to go on?”

“I mean't go off.”

“Then vy don't you speak plain hinglish,” said the clarionist; “but, I say, lug out t'other browns, or I shall say vot the flute said ven his master said as how he'd play a tune on him.”

“Vot vos that?”

“Vy, he'd be blow'd if he would!”

“You're a owdacious fellow.”

“Tip!” was the laconic answer, accompanied by an expressive twiddling of the fingers.

“Vell, there then,” answered the footman, reluctantly giving him the price of his silence.

“Thank'ye,” said the musician, “and in time to come, old fellow, never do nothin' by halves—'cept it's a calve's head!”