XXV:
24._

Some day, when you read about the great composers, you will be
delighted with the pictures of their home-life. You will see how they
employed music every day. In all cases, as we study them, we learn how
very much they have sacrificed for the music they love, studying it
daily because of the joy which it yields them. We see them as little
children, eager to be taught, wanting to listen to music, and to hear
about it. Many of the composers whose child-life is thus interesting
were children in very poor families, where things were neither fine
nor beautiful, where the necessary things of life were not plentiful,
and where all had to be careful and saving so that every bit should be
made to go as far as possible. The eagerness and determination of some
children in music-history is really wonderful. It is the true
determination. And you are not surprised, in following it, to note
that it leads the children who have it into lives of great usefulness.

All through the life of Handel we find determination running like a
golden thread. He was just as determined to be a musician as Lincoln
was to get an education when he read books by the firelight. Handel's
father was a surgeon, and knew so little about music that he failed
entirely to understand the child. He not only forbade the boy to study
music, but even kept him away from school that he might not by any
chance learn to read the notes. But one who was in future years to
befriend homeless children and to write wondrous music for all the
world could not be held back by such devices. By some means, and with
friendly assistance (perhaps his mother's), he succeeded in smuggling
into the garret a spinet, which is a kind of piano. By placing cloth
upon the strings he so deadened the wires that no one downstairs could
hear the tones when the spinet was played. And day after day this
little lad would sit alone in his garret, learning more and more about
the wonders which his heart and his head told him were in the tiny
half-dumb spinet before him. Not the more cheerful rooms down-stairs
nor the games of his playmates drew him away from the music he loved,
the music which he felt in his heart, remember.

One would expect such determination to show itself in many ways. It
did. Handel does not disappoint us in this. All through his life he
had strong purposes and a strong will--concentration--which led him
forward. You know how he followed his father's coach once. Per