e ... and I will!"

His wife was still "a gift from above," and his allusions to her were
affectionate to the utmost. In 1846, and again in the summer of 1847,
he suffered a violent melancholia. In these periods he experienced an
inability to remember his own music long enough to write it down. He
saw but few friends, among them the charming widow of Von Weber,
Ferdinand Hiller, Mendelssohn, Joachim, and a few others. Wagner wrote
some articles for Schumann's journal and was highly thought of at
first, but Schumann soon lost sympathy with him; the final sign of the
break-up of his wonderful appreciation of other men's music.

His life was more and more his home, and that more and more a voluntary
prison. In 1853 he presented his wife on her birthday with a grand
piano, and several new compositions. He took great delight in his
family, and could even compose amid the hilarity and noise of his
children. Concerning children he had written in 1845 to Mendelssohn,
whose wife had presented him with a second child, "We are looking
forward to a similar event, and I always tell my wife, 'one cannot have
enough.' It is the greatest blessing we have on earth."

Clara bore him eight children, and at her concerts there was usually a
nurse with a babe in arms waiting for her in the wings. Schumann wrote
three sonatas for his three daughters, and other compositions for them.
His famous "Kinderscenen" were, however, composed before his marriage.

It was in 1853 that his old enthusiasm for new composers broke forth in
his ardent welcome to Brahms (who was then twenty years old), who
became a devoted friend and was of much comfort to Frau Schumann after
Schumann's death. This was not far off, but before life went, he must
suffer a death in life.

Worst of all in that final disintegration of his great soul was the
interest he took in the atrocious frauds of spiritualism. He was even
duped into believing in the cheap swindle of table-tipping. The bliss
of Robert Browning's home was broken up in this same form, of
all-encompassing credulity, only it was Mrs. Browning who was the
spiritualist in this case and resisted Browning's sanity in the matter.

Schumann fancied that he heard spirit voices rebuking and praising him,
and he rose once in the night to write down a theme given him by the
ghosts of Schubert and Mendelssohn, on which he afterward wrote
variations which were never finished and were the last pathetic
exercise of his magn