ickly become a
clever player, and even at the age of eight had begun to put his ideas
on paper. We are told by his biographers that he was accustomed
to extemporize at school, and had such a knack in portraying the
characteristics of his school-fellows in music as to make his purpose
instantly recognizable. His father died when Schumann was only
seventeen, and his mother, who was also bent on her son becoming a
jurist, became his guardian. It was a severe battle between taste
and duty, but love for his widowed mother conquered, and young Robert
Schumann entered the University of Leipzig as a law student. It was with
a feeling almost of despair that he wrote at this time, "I have decided
upon law as my profession, and will work at it industriously, however
cold and dry the beginning may be." Previously, however, he had spent a
year in the household of Frederick Wieck, the distinguished teacher of
music. So much he had exacted before succumbing to maternal pleading.
At this time he first made the acquaintance of a charming and precocious
child, Clara Wieck, who played such an important part in his future
life.

Robert Schumann's law studies were inexpressibly tedious to him, and so
he told his sympathetic professor, the learned Thibaut, author of the
treatise "On the Purity of Music," in a characteristic manner. He went
to the piano and played Weber's "Invitation to the Waltz," commenting on
the different passages: "Now she speaks--that's the love prattle; now
he speaks--that's the man's earnest voice; now both the lovers speak
together "; concluding with the remark, "Isn't all that better far than
anything that jurisprudence can utter?" The young student became quite
popular in society as a pianist, heard Ernst and Paganini for the first
time, and composed several works, among them the Toccata in D major.
The genius for music would come to the fore in spite of jurisprudence.
A vacation trip to Italy which the young man made gave fresh fuel to
the flame, and he began to write the most passionate pleas to his
mother that she should con sent to his adoption of a musical career. The
distressed woman wrote to Wieck to know what he thought, and the answer
was favorable to Robert's aspirations. Robert was intoxicated with his
mother's concession, and he poured out his enthusiasm to Wieck: "Take
me as I am, and, above all, bear with me. No blame shall depress me, no
praise make me idle. Pails upon pails of very cold theory can n