y, the 3rd of February, we had been getting up
theatricals, and great excitement prevailed amongst old and young, for
all were to take part in them. I feel pretty sure that my mother had
planned it all, for, amongst a good many other things, she was the
family poet and playwright. The performance began with a scene acted in
the Frankfort dialect by Madame Mendelssohn and her sister, Madame
Schunck; then followed a charade in four parts--"Gewandhaus," the name
of the famous concert hall, was the word to be illustrated.

For the first syllable, "Ge," Joachim, then sixteen years old, appeared
in an eccentric wig, and played a wild Fantasia _a la_ Paganini on the
Ge-Saite, the G string. Then the stirring scene from "A
Midsummer-Night's Dream," when Pyramus and Thisbe make love through the
chink in the wall, stood for "Wand," the German for wall. The lion, I
need not say, roared well.

To illustrate the third syllable "Haus," my mother had written a little
domestic scene, to be acted by herself and her husband. When the curtain
rose, she was discovered knitting a blue stocking, and soliloquising on
the foibles of female authoresses; whereupon enter the cook. The cook
was my father, and his bearing on this his first appearance in the
part, his female attire, as well as his realistic get-up, so tickled
Mendelssohn's fancy, that he broke into a fit of Homeric laughter;
Homeric, with this reserve, that that historical outburst was not
produced in a wickerwork chair, and therefore cannot have been as
effective as Mendelssohn's. Under his weight the chair rocked to and
fro, and creaked till one thought it must break its bonds. But it held
out, and gradually found its balance; it was not till then that the cook
was allowed to proceed with her part.

Finally "Gewandhaus," the complete word, was represented by all the
juvenile members of the company; each of us had to blow or play some
instrument of a primitive character. Joachim led with a toy violin, and
I wielded the baton, and did my best to take off the characteristic ways
of my illustrious godfather. Some of my imitative faculty must have
survived the dead-man period of my early days, for the wickerwork once
more shook with the sympathetic laughter of its occupant, and it reached
a climax when Joachim made some pointed remarks in imitation of the
master.

After the performance actors and public gathered round a festive board.
In the centre of the supper-table stood the birt