Friday was a carbon copy of Thursday, cloudless blue skies, temperature in the 70s. Before crossing the road to the Daniel Webster statue, at the intersection of paths where a seller of prints and photographs camps out, a young woman has lately appeared. She sits on the ground and plays an electric guitar hooked up to a small amplifier. As I walked by her, a mother and daughter had stopped to listen. “I play ‘Imagine’ for you,” she told the little girl, pronouncing it with the accent on the first syllable.

The crowds were out today. Before long, I’d convinced an Australian woman to hula. Her teenage daughter wanted nothing to do with it. While mom danced, daughter walked around to the other side of the fountain. “She’s not even going to take my picture,” said mom, continuing to hula as the girl moved out of sight. Finally, she gave me a dollar, then looked around, unsure where to go next.

The bench sitters came across with a few dollars, then one of them, who had been taking my picture, pulled out his harmonica and joined me in “Give Me a Ukulele and a Ukulele Baby.”

A well-dressed Mexican woman came forward before she understood that I wanted her to dance the hula. A good sport, she let me put the lei over her head. We went to the hukilau at a moderate, dignified tempo. Her husband took pictures and gave me a buck.

On the bench, a mother nursed her baby under a white shawl. When they got up to leave, I was rewarded with $1. The dad, who had been roaming around to get a look at the big bubble man and the jazz combo in the arcade, rejoined his family near me and kicked in another single.

As usual, I ended with “Little Grass Shack.” Looking around, I saw that a woman sitting at the edge of the fountain was quietly singing along. When we got to the humahumanukunukuapua’a, she was aglow. While I packed up, she walked up to me with $2 in her hand. “My husband passed 2 years ago,” she said. “He used to sing that song to my daughter when she was a baby.” I looked up and spotted the daughter, now a young woman in her 30s; we smiled and nodded. “What are the odds,” the woman went on. “We came from Memphis and Seattle to meet in New York, and here you are.”