sane on all subjects. He could take care of his own affairs, lend a
needed hand with others, but never meddle--smile with that half-sardonic
grimace at all foolish little things, weep with the stricken when
calamity came; yet above it all the little man towered, carrying himself
like the giant that he was. And yet he never made the mistake of taking
himself too seriously. "I am trying to run opposition to Michelangelo's
'Moses,'" he once called to Dietrich, as he leaned out of the window in
the sunshine, and stroked his flowing beard. In his later years many
have testified to this Jovelike quality that Brahms diffused by his
presence. No one could come into his aura and fail to feel his sense of
power. Around such souls is a sacred circle--if you are allowed to come
within this boundary, it is only by sufferance; within this space only
the pure in heart can dwell.

* * * * *

Tolstoy in "Anna Karenina" speaks of that quiet and constant light to be
seen on the faces of those who are successful--those who know that their
success is acknowledged by the world.

Brahms was a successful man by temperament, for success (like East
Aurora) is a condition of mind. There is no tragedy for those who do not
accept tragedy; and the treatment we receive from others is only our own
reflected thought.

Brahms thought well of everybody, if he thought of any one at all. He
reveled in the sunshine, and everywhere made friends of children. "We
saw Brahms on the hotel veranda at Domodossola," wrote a young woman to
me in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five, "and what do you think?--he was on
all fours, with three children on his back, riding him for a horse!"

For many years Brahms used to make an annual pilgrimage to Italy, and
often on these tours at fairs he would fall in with Gipsy bands. At such
times he would always stop and listen, and would lustily applaud the
performance. On one such occasion, Dietrich tells, the leader recognized
Brahms, and instantly rapped for silence. He was seen to pass the
whispered word along, and then the band struck up one of Brahms' pieces,
greatly to the delight of the composer.

He was a man of the people, and I am glad to know that he hated a table
d'hote, smiled a smile of derision at all dress-coats, had small
sympathy with pink teas, loved his friends, doted on babies, and was
never so happy as when in the country walking along grass-grown lanes in
the early summer mor