unshaven
beard. Then he would seat himself at his table and write; and afterwards
get up again to the washhand basin and dabble and hum as before.
Ludicrous as were these scenes, no one dared venture to notice them, or
to disturb him while engaged in his inspiring ablutions, for these were
his moments of profoundest meditation.

Many anecdotes are told of him likewise.

The wife of an esteemed pianoforte player, residing in Vienna, was a
great admirer of Beethoven, and she earnestly wished to possess a lock
of his hair--her husband, anxious to gratify her, applied to a gentleman
who was very intimate with Beethoven, and who had rendered him some
service. Beethoven sent the lady a lock of hair cut from a _goat's
beard_--and Beethoven's own hair being very grey and harsh, there was no
reason to fear that the hoax would be very readily detected. The lady
was overjoyed at possessing this supposed memorial of her saint,
proudly showing it to all her acquaintance; but, when her happiness at
its height, some one who happened to know the secret, made her
acquainted with the deception that had been practised on her--the lady's
wrath who will attempt to describe?

Beethoven's name I have already told you was Ludwig Von Beethoven. In
some legal proceedings in which he was concerned, it was intimated by
the court that the word von, of Dutch origin, does not ennoble the
family to whose name it is prefixed--according to the laws of
Holland--that, in the province of the Rhine in which Beethoven was born,
it was held to be of no higher value--that, consequently, the halo of
nobility ought to be stripped from this Von in Austria also. Beethoven
was accordingly required to produce proofs of his nobility. "My
_nobility_! My _nobility_!" he exclaimed--"_Why, my nobility is here,
here!_"--clapping his forehead.

Right, Beethoven, brains are the highest nobility, if not the richest.
I love birth, and ancestry, when they are incentives to exertion not the
title deeds to sloth. Who would not prefer being the descendant of a
Stephenson, an Arkwright, or a Crompton, or any other of those great
architects of their own fortunes, and to feel some of their noble
energies, firing their blood to efforts of industry, than to be for ever
falling back on some legend or fiction of ancestry; and in the absence
of any _personal_ claim to greatness to be referring back and depending
on those great mistakes of our forefathers, when he who waded through
s