t the Alster
Pavillion. The mother, much older than her husband, tried to help out
the family finances by keeping a little shop where needles and thread
were sold.

Little Johannes, or Hannes as he was called, was surrounded from his
earliest years by a musical atmosphere, and must have shown a great
desire to study music. We learn that his father took him to Otto
Cossel, to arrange for piano lessons. Hannes was seven years old, pale
and delicate looking, fair, with blue eyes and a mass of flaxen hair.
The father said:

"Herr Cossel, I wish my son to become your pupil; he wants so much
to learn the piano. When he can play as well as you do it will be
enough."

Hannes was docile, eager and quick to learn. He had a wonderful memory
and made rapid progress. In three years a concert was arranged for
him, at which he played in chamber music with several other musicians
of Hamburg. The concert was both a financial and artistic success. Not
long after this, Cossel induced Edward Marxsen, a distinguished master
and his own teacher, to take full charge of the lad's further musical
training. Hannes was about twelve at the time.

Marxsen's interest in the boy's progress increased from week to week,
as he realized his talents. "One day I gave him a composition of
Weber's," he says. "The next week he played it to me so blamelessly
that I praised him. 'I have also practised it in another way,' he
answered, and played me the right hand part with the left hand." Part
of the work of the lessons was to transpose long pieces at sight;
later on Bach's Preludes and Fugues were done in the same way.

Jakob Brahms, who as we have seen was in very poor circumstances, was
ready to exploit Hannes' gift whenever occasion offered. He had the
boy play in the band concerts in the Alster Pavillion, which are
among the daily events of the city's popular life, as all know who are
acquainted with Hamburg, and his shillings earned in this and similar
ways, helped out the family's scanty means. But late hours began to
tell on the boy's health. His father begged a friend of his, a wealthy
patron of music, to take the lad to his summer home, in return for
which he would play the piano at any time of day desired and give
music lessons to the young daughter of the family, a girl of about his
own age.

Thus it came about that early in May, 1845, Hannes had his first taste
of the delights of the country. He had provided himself with a small
dumb keyboa