id who lived in
his day and were blind to his true worth by being ensnared in cliques
that were in competition with him.

* * * * *

Elkhart: I intimated a few pages back that I would have liked to have
Mozart for a friend and companion. Mozart needed me no less than I need
him. "Genius needs a keeper," once said I. Zangwill, probably with
himself in mind. We all need friends--and to be your brother's keeper is
very excellent if you do not cease being his friend. And poor Mozart did
so need a friend who could stand between him and the rapacious wolf that
scratched and sniffed at his door as long as he lived. I do not know why
the wolf sniffed, for Mozart really never had anything worth carrying
away. He was so generous that his purse was always open, and so full of
unmixed pity that the beggars passed his name along and made cabalistic
marks on his gateposts. Every seedy, needy, thirsty and ill-appreciated
musician in Germany regarded him as lawful prey. They used to say to
Mozart, "I can not beg and to dig I am ashamed--so grant me a small
loan, I pray thee."

Yes, Mozart needed me to plan his tours and market his wares. I'm no
genius, and although they say I was an infant terrible, I never was an
infant prodigy. At the tender age of six, Mozart was giving concerts and
astonishing Europe with his subtle skill. At a like age I could catch a
horse with a nubbin, climb his back, and without a saddle or bridle
drive him wherever I listed by the judicious use of a tattered hat. Of
course I took pains to mount only a horse that had arrived at years of
discretion, matronly brood-mares or run-down plow-horses; but this is
only proof of my practical turn of mind. Mozart never learned how to
control either horse or man by means of a tattered hat or diplomacy:
music was his hobby, and it was long years after his death before the
world discovered that his hobby was no hobby at all, but a genuine
automobile that carried him miles and miles, clear beyond all his
competitors: so far ahead that he was really out of shouting distance.

Indeed, Mozart took such an early start in life and drove his machinery
so steadily, not to say so furiously, that at thirty-five all the
bearings grew hot for lack of rebabbitting, and the vehicle went the way
of the one-horse shay--all at once and nothing first, just as bubbles do
when they burst.

At the age which Mozart died I had seen all I wanted to of business