e magical feats of the baby Mozart had
set every grasping parent staring for signs of musical precocity in his
children. But Mathias undoubtedly wanted to do his best for his boy, and
Joseph himself must have had ambition of a sort--witness his endeavours
to play the fiddle without a fiddle to play--and when Frankh undertook
to place the boy in a choir and teach him music, the offer was joyfully
accepted. So he went to Hainburg, never to return to Rohrau until he was
an old and celebrated man.

Nothing need be recorded of his life in Hainburg save that Frankh worked
him hard. Indeed, much later Haydn declared himself thankful to Frankh
for forming in him the habit of working hard. He sang, played the fiddle
and harpsichord, and went to school; and suddenly one George Reutter
came on the scene. He came, heard, and was conquered by Haydn's voice.
He was Hofcompositor and Kapellmeister at St. Stephen's Church in
Vienna, and he took the boy on the same terms as those on which Frankh
had brought him away from Rohrau. To Vienna Haydn went, was entered in
the Cantorei of St. Stephen's, and there for some years he sang in the
choir. In return he was taught reading, writing and arithmetic, religion
and Latin. He had excellent masters for singing and for violin and
harpsichord; but he had no teaching in theory. Reutter gave him only
two lessons, and he was left without guidance to cover as much
music-paper as he could get hold of. But he stuck grimly to the task of
making himself an efficient composer, and worked out his own salvation.
Reutter, having secured him for his voice, took no interest in him, and
when the voice went Haydn had to go too. That happened in 1745. His
brother Michael came, with a voice superior to Joseph's; Joseph's broke,
and the Empress said his singing was like a cock's crowing. Michael sang
a solo so beautifully as to win a present of 24 ducats, and since it was
evident that the services of St. Stephen's could go on without Joseph,
Reutter waited for a chance of getting rid of Joseph. So Joseph, though
far from wishing to oblige, must needs play a practical joke, and was
ignominiously spanked and turned out into the streets.

With both Frankh and Reutter he had had a hard enough time--plenty of
work, not too much food, and no petting--but now he learnt what hard
times really meant. He faced them with plenty of courage. A chorister of
St. Michael's gave him shelter; some warmhearted person--to whom be all