he informal society of his few chosen friends, all men of talent in
some direction, whom he drew about him by his own genius and
good-fellowship. His very nickname, "Kanner-was," taken from his usual
question about newcomers, bears witness to the fact that he would have
nothing to do with any one who did not show intellectual ability in some
direction,--poetry or art, if not music.

Schubert's brief schooling, where his natural gifts were left to
flourish by themselves, was succeeded by three years of musical drudgery
in the shape of school-teaching. But his genius was restless, and he
threw up that post. How he existed during the next few years is a
complete mystery. He lived for a while rent-free, and his wants were
never many, but for some time he apparently got along with no income
whatever. His fertility in composing songs showed itself already. His
later feat of writing "Hark, Hark, the Lark" on the back of a bill of
fare, finishing it within half an hour of his first seeing the poem, is
well known. It seems that he could forget as easily as he invented. At
one time he sent a set of songs to his friend Vogl for inspection, but
the latter was unable to look them over for two weeks. On finding one of
especial interest, Vogl had it transposed to suit his voice, and gave it
to Schubert to play. The composer, after trying it, cried in admiration:
"I say, that's not bad; whose is it?"

At last he obtained the post of private teacher in the family of Count
Esterhazy. It was the Countess Caroline, younger of the two daughters,
who was to become the object of Schubert's later adoration. On the first
visit, however, she was only nine, and we find Schubert, with his usual
promiscuous taste, more at home with the servants than in the
drawing-room. "The cook is a pleasant fellow," he writes; "the ladies'
maid is thirty; the housemaid very pretty, and often pays me a visit;
the nurse is somewhat ancient; the butler is my rival; the two grooms
get on better with the horses than with us. The count is a little
rough; the countess proud, but not without heart, and the two young
ladies good children."

Eight years later he spent another period of six months at the chateau,
and at this time felt the passion for the young countess that has been
so often alluded to in his biographies. According to Bauernfeld, she
inspired an ideal devotion that sustained and comforted him to the end
of his life. There can be no doubt that etiquette a