rested development.

If a parent does everything for a child, the child probably will never
do anything for himself. It is Nature's plan--she seems to think that no
one needs strength excepting the struggler, and being kind she comes to
his rescue; but the man who puts forth no effort remains a weakling to
the end.

Johann placed success beyond his reach very early in life by putting an
enemy into his mouth to steal away his brains. His marriage to a
daughter of a cook in Ehrenbreitstein Castle did not stop his
waywardness, or give him decision as was hoped. Marriage as a scheme of
reformation is not always a success, and women who lend themselves to it
take great chances.

Mary Magdalena was a widow, and some say possessed of wiles. That she
was beneath Johann in social station, but beyond him in actual worth,
there is no doubt. And whether she snared the incautious man, or whether
the marriage was arranged by the elder Biethofen as a diplomatic move in
the interests of morality, matters little. The end justifies the means;
and as a net result of this mating, without putting forward the
circumstance as a precedent to be religiously followed, the world has
Beethoven and his work.

* * * * *

A plate affixed to Number Five Hundred Fifteen Bonngasse, Bonn, gives
the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven as December Seventeenth, Seventeen
Hundred Seventy. He was the second-born child of his mother, and after
him came a goodly assortment of boys and girls. Two of his brothers
lived to exercise a sinister influence over the life of the Master, and
to darken days that should have been luminous with love. Little Ludwig
was the pet and pride of the grandfather. The grandfather had even
insisted that the baby should bear his name. Disappointment in his own
child caused him to center his love in the grandchild. This instinct
that makes men long to live again in the lives of their children--is it
reaching out for immortality? And as the grandfather virtually supported
the household, he was allowed to have his own way, and indeed that
strong, yet cheery will was not to be opposed. The old man prophesied
what the boy would do, just as love ever does, and has done, since the
world began.

But only in his dreams was Ludvig van Biethofen to know of the success
of his namesake. When the boy was scarce four years old, the old man
passed away. The place in the orchestra that Johann held through favor
was soo