cess. Johann, therefore, seemed to
think that his little son would have a chance of earning money by his
forced capacities for music. That a child of such tender years should
have been regarded in the light of a bread-winner for the family
appears unreasonable and hard; and it is not to be wondered at that
Ludwig failed to understand the necessity which led to such pressure
being put upon him. In his mother, Marie Magdalena, however, he could
always find a ready sympathy and a tenderness which must have served
to counteract, to some degree, the unhappiness occasioned by the
father's severity. But not even a mother's love could make up for the
loss the child had sustained by his grandfather's death, for the
excellent qualities of head and heart which the old man had exhibited
were just those which the boy missed in his father. To Ludwig music
meant everything--or, rather, it would have meant everything, even at
that early time, had its development only been continued under the
same kindly influence.

Despite his severity and unreasonableness, however, Johann must be
credited with the determination that his boy's knowledge of music
should be as thorough as it was possible to make it with the means at
his command, and to this end he spared no pains. Moreover, in order
that Ludwig should not grow up in complete ignorance of subjects which
lay outside his art, he was sent to the public school of Bonn to pick
up what learning he could, though this chiefly comprised reading and
writing. With his schoolfellows Ludwig had little in common. They
thought him shy, because he kept to himself, and showed no desire to
join in their games. The truth was his mind was almost wholly absorbed
by music, and the consciousness that this great love had taken
possession of his soul, and was growing stronger day by day may have
made him inapt for games or boyish society, and thus may have led to
his taking refuge in his own thoughts. In the companionship of music
he could never have felt lonely, and in his walks between school hours
he found plenty to interest him. He never tired of sounding Nature for
her harmonies, and as he pursued his way through the fields and lanes
he listened to the peasants singing at their work, and then, catching
up the simple tunes, he fitted his own notes to them, so as to produce
beautiful and subtle effects of harmony. Many of those old folk-tunes
were closely connected with the history of the country to which they