he had shared his every dream before his
first attempt to translate it into sound; the faithful friend who had
been more to him than any other member of the happy circle in the
Leipziger Strasse, of which, from first to last, she was the very life
and soul,--Fanny Hensel, the sister, the artist, the poet, while
conducting a rehearsal of the music for the next bright Sunday
gathering, was suddenly seized with paralysis; suffered her hands to
fall powerless from the piano at which she had so often presided; and,
an hour before midnight, was called away to join the beloved parents
whose death had been as sudden and painless as her own. She had hoped
and prayed that she, too, might pass away as they had done, and her
prayer was granted; to her exceeding gain, but to the endless grief of
the brother who had loved her as himself. On Sunday morning, in place
of the piano, a coffin, covered with flowers, stood in the well-known
hall in the Garden House. And the life, of which that Garden House had
so long been the cherished home, became henceforth a memory of the
past."

An English lady, Mrs. Florence Fenwick Miller, known not only as a
writer, but as an ardent advocate of woman suffrage, has in one of her
books written a chapter which she entitles "A Genius Wasted--Fanny
Mendelssohn." She says: "One of the saddest instances with which the
world has ever become acquainted, of gifts repressed and faculties
wasted because of the sex of their possessor, is that of Fanny
Mendelssohn, the sister of the famous composer, Felix Mendelssohn.
With natural powers apparently fully as great as her brother's, Fanny
was not, indeed, denied all opportunity of cultivating them, but was
effectually prevented from utilising them, and, therefore, from fully
developing her genius or from displaying its force."

These two Jewish children were members of a family in which both
intellect, in its widest meaning, and musical talent, specifically,
were hereditary. Their mother began to teach music both to the boy and
the girl in their early years. Fanny, who was five years older than
her brother, was naturally more advanced than he; and when the two
children were allowed to show off their powers as pianists, it was
Fanny who always won the most applause. They passed from their
mother's elementary tuition to that of superior teachers, L. Berger and
afterward Zeiter, and the former of these indicated Fanny as being, in
his opinion, the future gre