nd the Moscheles was a
source of real happiness to both. They were constantly meeting to make
or to discuss music, to take long walks together, or short ones along
the Grimmaische Strasse to the Conservatorio. The work there was
particularly congenial to my father's taste; after the many years of
feverish activity he had spent in London, Leipsic was truly a haven of
rest to him, and he could well say, "I am beginning to realise my dream
of emancipation from professional slavery."

Following the example of the parents, the children of the two families
soon fraternised too. I recollect a very lively children's party at our
house. Mendelssohn came in and joined in the games; then he went to the
piano and set us all a dancing as only the rhythm of his improvisation
could. When he ended, we clamoured for more. Give any child a
Mendelssohn finger and no wonder it wants the ten. We got another
splendid waltz that glided into a gallop, but when that too came to an
end, we insatiable little tyrants would not let him get up from the
piano.

"Well," he said, "if all the little girls will go down on their knees
and beg and pray of me, I may be induced to give you one more dance." A
circle was soon formed around him, and they had to beg hard, harder, and
hardest, before he allowed himself to be softened.

David, the violinist, also belonged to the intimate circle of our
friends. He had come to London in 1839 with a warm introduction from
Mendelssohn, and had soon endeared himself to all of us. He was a
musician of the good old kind, practising and loving music for its own
sake; he was a man of high culture, ever entertaining and genial, and
took special delight in smoking innumerable cigars with his friends. In
one respect he was much like my father and Mendelssohn. He could not
understand how anybody could get through twenty-four hours without
playing some Sonata or Trio. I recollect he was quite indignant on one
occasion when he was in London and was staying with Sterndale Bennett.
"Would you believe it?" he said. "I have been in the house now for more
than a week, and we have not once sat down to make music." Poor
Sterndale Bennett, who had probably been giving his eight or ten
lessons a day in London or Brighton!

Rietz, too, the conductor of the Gewandhaus Concerts, was a friend and a
_music-maker_ in the German sense--a musician of the highest order, and
a brilliant virtuoso on the violoncello.

For Mendelssohn's birthda