As I read biography I always keep thinking what I would have done in certain described circumstances, and so not only am I living the other man's life, but I am comparing my nature with his. Everything is comparative; that is the only way we realize anything—by comparing it with something else. As you read of the great man he seems very near to you. You reach out across the years and touch hands with him, and with him you hope, suffer, strive and enjoy: your existence is all blurred and fused with his.
And through this oneness you come to know and comprehend a character that has once existed, very much better than the people did who lived in his day and were blind to his true worth by being ensnared in cliques that were in competition with him.
lkhart: 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 life, in fact I had made a fortune, being the only man in America who had all the money he wanted, and so just turned about and went to college. This I firmly hold is a better way than to be sent to college and then go into trade later and forget all you ever learned at school. I had rather go to college than be sent. Every man should get rich, that he might know the worthlessness of riches; and every man should have a college education, just to realize how little the thing is worth.
Yes, Mozart needed a good friend whose abilities could have rounded out and made good his deficiencies. Most certainly I could not do the things that he did, but I should have been his helper, and might, too, had not a century, one wide ocean, and a foreign language separated us.