Yet they were themselves as a class
in a state of sad physical disrepair, and one of them was the visible prey
of rheumatism which he might have sent flying from his joints with a
single shock. The only person whom I saw improving his health with the
battery was a rosy-faced school-boy, who was taking ten cents' worth of
electricity; and I hope it did not disagree with his pop-corn and soda-
water.
Farther on was a picturesque group of street-musicians,--violinists and
harpers; a brother and four sisters, by their looks,--who afforded almost
the only unpractical amusement to be enjoyed on the Common, though not far
from them was a blind old negro, playing upon an accordion, and singing to
it in the faintest and thinnest of black voices, who could hardly have
profited any listener. No one appeared to mind him, till a jolly Jack-tar
with both arms cut off, but dressed in full sailor's togs, lurched heavily
towards him. This mariner had got quite a good effect of sea-legs by some
means, and looked rather drunker than a man with both arms ought to be;
but he was very affectionate, and, putting his face close to the other's,
at once entered into talk with the blind man, forming with him a picture
curiously pathetic and grotesque.
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