Excerpt from The Leaden Casket: A Novel Harley Street, was driving home one fine May evening, and had all but reached his destination, when he received a considerable mental shock. He had been running his daily stage of duty since seven o'clock that morning, and now, worn out by this long strain on his clinical sagacity, was lying back in his brougham, when it stopped abruptly, checked by a little crowd collected outside his own door. Perceiving where he was, he got out of his carriage with medical celerity, rapped vigorously at the knocker, and then, to beguile the time, turned to see what was going on in the street. His vantage-ground of five or six steps of elevation above the roadway enabled him to see an Italian organ-grinder, who was at one mo ment gesticulating wildly, and calling upon heaven, earth, and all around to witness that he had a right either to make music, or be paid to leave ofi'; the next playing a few frantic snatches of the street melody of the day; then stopping to gesticulate once more, and again dashing at the implement of music and whirling around L'ne Emma. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.