d the
Rhine; the confectioner, from whom you can buy thread and shirt-buttons;
the list of visitors, which comes out every Saturday, as _Punch_ does
with you; the walking-post, who, before going to Frankfort, calls as he
passes to ask what we want, and next day brings me my linen back; the
women who sell cherries, with whom my little four-year-old Paul makes a
bargain, or sends them away, just as he pleases; above all, the pure
Rhenish air,--this is familiar to all, and I call it Germany!"

Grove makes this sketch of the blissful circle:

"The pleasure in his simple home life, which crops out now and then in
these Frankfort letters, is very genuine and delightful. Now, Marie is
learning the scale of C; he has actually forgotten how to play it, and
has taught her to pass her thumb under the wrong finger! Now, Paul
tumbles the others about so as to crack their skulls as well as his
own. Another time he is dragged off from his letter to see a great tower
which the children have built, and on which they have ranged all their
slices of bread and jam--'A good idea for an architect,' At ten Carl
comes to him for reading and sums, and at five for spelling and
geography--and so on. 'And,' to sum up, 'the best part of every pleasure
is gone if Cecile is not there,' His wife is always somewhere in the
picture."

Even when Mendelssohn went to England and was cordially received by the
young Queen Victoria, and when she asked him what she could grant him
for his pleasure, he asked to see the royal nursery. Stratton describes
the strange reward of his art as follows:

"Delighted beyond everything, the Queen led the way, and the two were
soon deep in the mysteries of children's clothing, dietary, ailments,
and all that appertains to the duties of the heads of a family.
Perchance he inspected the juvenile wardrobe of the future Empress of
his own Germany."

On one of the home festivals, Cecile and her sister gave and acted a
comic dialogue between two ladies' maids, in Frankfort dialect.
Gradually, however, Mendelssohn's overbusy musical enthusiasm wore down
his health, and at thirty-seven he was nearing the end of his marvellous
vitality and vivacity. In May, 1847, his sister Fanny was conducting a
rehearsal of her choir; she sat at the piano till suddenly her hands
dropped from the keys, and she was dead. The news was told to
Mendelssohn without any preparation; with a scream he dropped senseless;
it was said that a blood-vessel