sons," in tears.

What indications, if any, the child had given of remarkable musical
genius, we do not know,--not one of the many anecdotes bearing upon this
point having any trustworthy foundation in fact. Probably the father
discovered in him that which awakened the hope of some time rivalling
the then recent career of Leopold Mozart with little Wolfgang, or at
least saw reason to expect as much success with his son as had rewarded
the efforts of his neighbor Ries with his Franz; at all events, we have
the testimony of Beethoven himself, that "already in his fourth year
music became his principal employment,"--and this it continued to be to
the end. Yet, as he grew older, his education in other respects was not
neglected. He passed through the usual course of boys of his time, not
destined for the universities, in the public schools of the city, even
to the acquiring of some knowledge of Latin. The French language was, as
it still is, a necessity to every person of the Rhine provinces above
the rank of peasant; and Beethoven became able to converse in it with
reasonable fluency, even after years of disuse and almost total loss of
hearing. It has also been stated that he knew enough of English to read
it; but this is more than doubtful. In fact, as a schoolboy, he made the
usual progress,--no more, no less.

In music it was otherwise. The child Mozart seems alone to have equalled
or surpassed the child Beethoven. Ludwig soon exhausted his father's
musical resources, and became the pupil of Pfeiffer, chorist in the
Electoral Orchestra, a genial and kind-hearted man, and so good a
musician as afterward to be appointed band-master to a Bavarian
regiment. Beethoven always held him in grateful and affectionate
remembrance, and in the days of his prosperity in Vienna sent him
pecuniary aid. His next teacher was Van der Eder, court organist,--a
proof that the boy's progress was very rapid, as this must have been the
highest school that Bonn could offer. With this master he studied the
organ. When Van der Eder retired from office, his successor, Christian
Gottlob Neefe, succeeded him also as instructor of his remarkable pupil.

Wegeler and Schindler, writing several years after the great composer's
death, state, that, of these three instructors, he considered himself
most indebted to Pfeiffer, declaring that he had profited little or
nothing by his studies with Neefe, of whose severe criticisms upon his
boyish efforts in co