eling that music should form part of the education of a clergyman, he
consented to the mother's proposition that the boy should take lessons
on the violin.

Ole could not sleep for joy, that first night of ownership; and, when
the house was wrapped in slumber, he got up and stole on tiptoe to the
room where his treasure lay. The bow seemed to beckon to him, the
pretty pearl screws to smile at him out of their red setting. "I
pinched the strings just a little," he said. "It smiled at me ever more
and more. I took up the bow and looked at it. It said to me it would be
pleasant to try it across the strings. So I did try it just a very,
very little, and it did sing to me so sweetly. At first I did play very
soft. But presently I did begin a capriccio, which I like very much,
and it did go ever louder and louder; and I forgot that it was midnight
and that everybody was asleep. Presently I hear something crack; and
the next minute I feel my father's whip across my shoulders. My little
red violin dropped on the floor, and was broken. I weep much for it,
but it did no good. They did have a doctor to it next day, but it never
recovered its health."

He was given another violin, however, and, when only ten, he would
wander into the fields and woods, and spend hours playing his own
improvisations, echoing the song of the birds, the murmur of the brook,
the thunder of the waterfall, the soughing of the wind among the trees,
the roar of the storm.

But childhood's days are short. The years fly by. The little Ole is
eighteen, a student in the University of Christiana, preparing for the
ministry. His brother students beg him to play for a charitable
association. He remembers his father's request that he yield not to his
passion for music, but being urged for "sweet charity's sake," he
consents.

The youth's struggle between the soul's imperative demand and the
equally imperative parental dictate was pathetic. Meanwhile the
position of musical director of the Philharmonic and Dramatic Societies
becoming vacant, Ole was appointed to the office; and, seeing that it
was useless to contend longer against the genius of his son, the
disappointed father allowed him to accept the directorship.

When fairly launched on a musical career, his trials and
disappointments began. Wishing to assure himself whether he had genius
or not, he traveled five hundred miles to see and hear the celebrated
Louis Spohr, who received the tremulous youth col