uld live; but Destiny decreed
that the boy should not perish.

The first recollections of Liszt take in, in a happy view, four men
playing cards at a square table. One of these men was the boy's father,
another was Mein Herr Joseph Haydn, and the other two players are lost
in the fog of obscurity. Did they ever know what a wonderful game they
played, as little Franz Liszt, sitting on a corner of the table,
listened to their talk and admired the buttons on the coat of the
Kappellmeister? After the card-game Haydn sat at the piano and played,
and the boy, just three years old, thought he could do that, too. Then
there was another Kappellmeister in the employ of Prince Nicholas
Esterhazy at Eisenstadt, and his name was Hummel. He was a pupil of
Mozart, and used to tell of it quite often when he came up to Raiding on
little visits, after the wine had been sampled. Liszt the Elder used to
help Hummel straighten out his accounts, and where went Liszt the Elder,
there, too, went little Franz Liszt, who wasn't very strong and banked
on it, and had to be babied. And so little Franz became acquainted with
Hummel and used to sit on his knee at the piano, and together they
played funny duets that set the company in a roar--two tunes at a time,
harmonious discords and counterpoint, such as no one ever heard before,
or since.

At this time there was no piano at the Liszt cottage, but the boy
learned to play at the neighbors', and practised at the palace of the
Prince. His father and mother once took him there to hear Hummel. On
this occasion Hummel played the Concerto by Reis in C minor. At the
close of the performance, little Franz climbed up on the piano-stool and
very solemnly played the same thing himself, to the immense delight of
the listeners.

The father of Liszt has recorded that at this time the child was but
three years old, but after taking off the proper per cent for the pride
of a fond parent, the probabilities are the boy was five. This is the
better attested when we remember that it was only a few weeks later
that, on the request of Prince Esterhazy, the boy played at a concert in
Oedenburg.

This launched the boy on that public career which was to continue for
just seventy years. There is good evidence that the boy could read music
before he could read writing, and that he threw into his playing such
feeling and expression as Ferdinand Reis, who merely imitated his
master, Beethoven, had never anticipated. That