"IT was pleasant to raise the office window on Tuesday morning, thus admitting the strains of the haunting Intermezzo from Cavaleria Rusticana, produced by a violin with a harmonium accompaniment, wrote Gazette columnist Ariel 100 years ago.

"Theoretically, a violin and a harmonium may not convince one as a perfect combination, but in practice it was shown on Tuesday morning that in clever hands the two instruments are together capable of refined music - music of a kind outside the ability and inclination of the overwhelming majority of street musicians.

"It is at least unusual to see a man playing to the pockets of the passers-by wearing a white shirt, particularly where the white shirt is really white. I have heard less musicianly performances on concert platforms."

To Ariel's regret, the street performance was ended whem a policeman came along and moved the musicians on.

"One could wish that similar attentions would restrain the blatant, penetrating melodies mechanically ground from the piano organs outside one's residence, which just now insist vehemenlty on propounding a horticultural theory as to the reception of a tiny seed of love planted in the garden of your heart. This question may have a certain appropriateness in the season, but it is not violently interesting or particularly edifying to people closely engaged in their homes, perhaps at their writing tables.

"A friend was regretting the other day that the bye-laws did not own any influence upon the persistent activities of a youth with military inclinations in connection with a bugle.

"The youth's repertoire seems to consist of vague impressions of a number of calls. My friend's objection is not so much to the bugle as to the youth's imperfect musicianship. Whistled hints across several back gardens for the greater accuracy of the bugler's performance have received no encouragement, and the youth continues to fumble for the notes with maximum uncertainty, immediately losing succeeding bars of the tune when he has secured one of them."