e retirement, hidden from the public gaze, or
wandered unnoticed and unknown. They founded no schools, delivered no
public addresses, and in their own day made small impress on the times.
Both were sublimely indifferent to what had been said and done--the term
precedent not being found within the covers of their bright lexicon of
words. In the nature of each was a goodly trace of peroxide of iron that
often manifested itself in the man's work.

The faults in each spring from an intense personality, uncolored by the
surroundings, and such faults in such men are virtues.

They belong to that elect few who have built for the centuries. The
influence of Chopin, beyond that of other composers, is alive today, and
moves unconsciously, but profoundly, every music-maker; the seemingly
careless style of Crane is really lapidaric, and is helping to file the
fetters from every writer who has ideas plus, and thoughts that burn.

Mother Nature in giving out energy gives each man about an equal
portion. But that ability to throw the weight with the blow, to
concentrate the soul in a sonnet, to focus force in a single effort, is
the possession of God's Chosen Few. Chopin put his affection, his
patriotism, his wrath, his hope, and his heroism into his music--as if
the song of all the forest birds could be secured, sealed and saved for
us!

* * * * *

The father of Chopin was a Frenchman who went up to Poland seeking gain
and adventure. He became a soldier under Kosciusko and arose to rank of
Captain. He found such favor with the nobility by his gracious ways that
he became a teacher of French in the family of Count Frederic Skarbek.
In the family group was a fair young dependent of nervous
temperament--slight, active, gentle and intelligent. She was descendent
from a line of aristocrats, but in a country where revolutions have been
known to begin and end before breakfast, titles stand for little.

Nicholas Chopin, ex-soldier, teacher of French and Deportment, married
this fine young girl, and they lived in one of Count Skarbek's
straw-thatched cottages at the little village of Zelazowa-Wola,
twenty-nine miles from Warsaw. Here it was that Frederic Chopin was
born, in Eighteen Hundred Nine--that memorable year when Destiny sent a
flight of great souls to the planet Earth.

The country was bleak and battle-scarred; it had been drained of its men
and treasure, and served as a dueling-ground and the pl