When his shop had closed for want of customers, Paasch found that his failing eyesight and methodical slowness barred him from competing with younger and quicker men, and, his mind weakened and bewildered by disaster, he had turned for help to his first and only love, the violin.

For some years he had taught a few pupils who were too poor to pay the fees of the professional teachers, and, persuaded that pupils would flock to him if he gave his whole time to it he took a room and set up as a teacher.

In six months he had to choose between starvation by inches or playing dance music in Bob Fenner's hall for fifteen shillings a week.

For a while he endured this, playing popular airs that he hated and despised for the larrikins whom he hated and feared, a nightly butt and target for their coarse jests.

Then he preferred starvation, and found himself in the gutter with the clothes he stood up in and his fiddle.