[Hannah]: Accordeons! Accordeons!

An advertisment found while researching (National Police Gazette, February 7, 1846):

ACCORDEONS! ACCORDEONS!

The subscriber offers for sale at 76 Chatham street, a large and splendid assortment of the best finished and fine-toned French Accordeons, at wholesale and retail, for cash, at reduced prices. The Accordeon is an instrument of uncommon sweetness of tone, and bids fair to become one of the most fashionable and permanent. The following observations by some English writer are so happily and truly expressed, and so conformable with our ideas, that we take the liberty of transcribing them:

"This instrument of music is in every way entitled to the notice and patronage of the musical world. it produces the most melodious sounds, and is remarkable for its peculiar sweetness and power of tone: The most difficult passages can be performed on it with taste and delicacy, while the bold swell of the organ, the enchanting tones of the aeolian harp, and the dulcet strains of the hautboy are happily united. In the performance of quadrilles, waltzes, and other melodies, it is capable of giving to the different compositions grace and expression, while as an accompaniment to the voice, it is allowed for its size and portability to be unrivaled. With qualities so desirable, it might be imagined that some difficulty would attend its performance; on the contrary, although the accordian is calculated to exhibit the superiority of a finished performer, it may be played upon by the most inexperienced learner, who will insensibly, as it were, be taught without any knowledge of the science of music to distinguish the various expressions and passions which music is intended to convey."

GEORGE W. PRATT, 76 Chatham street;
Accordeons accurately tuned and repaired at short notice, and warranted correct.