sef after a few trials was able to perform the
shake to the entire satisfaction of his teacher. After testing him on
a portion of a mass the Capellmeister was willing to take him to the
Cantorei or Choir school of St. Stephen's in Vienna. The boy's heart
gave a great leap. Vienna, the city of his dreams. And he was really
going there! He could scarcely believe in his good fortune. If he
could have known all that was to befall him there, he might not have
been so eager to go. But he was only a little eight-year-old boy, and
childhood's dreams are rosy.

Once arrived at the Cantorei, Josef plunged into his studies with
great fervor, and his progress was most rapid. He was now possessed
with a desire to compose, but had not the slightest idea how to go
about such a feat. However, he hoarded every scrap of music paper he
could find and covered it with notes. Reutter gave no encouragement to
such proceedings. One day he asked what the boy was about, and when
he heard the lad was composing a "Salve Regina," for twelve voices,
he remarked it would be better to write it for two voices before
attempting it in twelve. "And if you must try your hand at
composition," added Reutter more kindly, "write variations on the
motets and vespers which are played in church."

As neither the Capellmeister nor any of the teachers offered to
show Josef the principles of composition, he was thrown upon his own
resources. With much self denial he scraped together enough money to
buy two books which he had seen at the second hand bookseller's and
which he had longed to possess. One was Fox's "Gradus ad Parnassum,"
a treatise on composition and counterpoint; the other Matheson's "The
Complete Capellmeister." Happy in the possession of these books, Josef
used every moment outside of school and choir practise to study them.
He loved fun and games as well as any boy, but music always came
first. The desire to perfect himself was so strong that he often added
several hours each day to those already required, working sixteen or
eighteen hours out of the twenty-four.

And thus a number of years slipped away amid these happy surroundings.
Little Josef was now a likely lad of about fifteen years. It was
arranged that his younger brother Michael was to come to the Cantorei.
Josef looked eagerly forward to this event, planning how he would help
the little one over the beginning and show him the pleasant things
that would happen to him in the new life. But