yed it through from memory.

Then piece after piece was brought out for him to play, and Zelter
leaned back and by his manner said, "Oh, it is nothing!"

And certainly it was nothing to the boy--he played with such ease that
his talent was quite unknown to himself. He had not yet discovered that
every one could not produce music just as they could talk.

Goethe's admiration for the boy was unbounded. The two weeks of
Mendelssohn's prescribed visit had expired and Goethe begged for an
extension of two weeks more. Every evening there was the little
impromptu concert. After that Felix paid various visits to Weimar.
Goethe's house was his home, and the affection between the old poet and
the young musician was very gentle and very firm. "All souls are of one
age," says Swedenborg. Goethe was seventy-three and Mendelssohn thirteen
when they first met, but very soon they were as equals--boys together.

Goethe was a learner to the day of his passing: he wanted to know. In
the presence of those who had followed certain themes further than he
had, he was as an eager, curious child. When Goethe was seventy-eight
and Mendelssohn eighteen, they spent another month together; and a
regular program of instruction was laid out. Each morning at precisely
nine, they met for the poet's "music lesson," as Goethe called it, and
the boy would play from some certain composer, showing the man's
peculiar style, and the features that differentiated him from others.
Goethe himself has recorded in his correspondence that it was Felix
Mendelssohn who taught him of Hengstenberg and Spontini, introduced him
to Hegel's "AEsthetics," and revealed to him for the first time the
wonders of Beethoven.

Can you not close your eyes and see them--the mighty giant of fourscore,
with his whitened locks, and the slight, slender, handsome boy?

The old man is seated in his armchair near the window that opens on the
garden. The youth is at the piano and plays from time to time to
illustrate his thought, then turns and talks, and the old man nods in
recognition. The boy sings and the old man chords in with a deep, mellow
bass which the years have not subdued.

When there are others present these two may romp, joke and talk
much--masking their hearts by frivolity--but together they sit in
silence, or speak only in lowered voices as all true lovers always do.
Their conversation is sparse and to the point; each is mindful of the
dignity and worth that the other