“The room where Frederick studied, and the adjoining apartment where he died, are shown. The former contains a library consisting wholly of books in French.
“We returned to Hamburg.
“We were in old Danish territory already. We stopped but one night at Hamburg on our return; then we made our way to the steamer which was to take us to the Denmark of to-day, Copenhagen.”
Among the stories on the Hamburg Night was one by a music-loving student of Yule, which he called
THE CITY OF HANDEL’S YOUTH.
The composer of the “Messiah,” George Frederick Handel, was born at Halle, Germany, Feb. 23, 1685. He sang before he could talk plainly. His father, a physician, was alarmed, for he had a poor opinion of music and musicians. As the child grew, nature asserted that he would be a musician; the father declared he should be a lawyer.
Little George was kept from the public school, because the gamut was there taught. He might go to no place where music would be heard, and no musical instrument was permitted in the house.
But nature, aided by the wiser mother, triumphed. In those days musical nuns played upon a dumb spinet, that they might not disturb the quiet of their convents. It was a sort of piano, and the strings were muffled with cloth. One of these spinets was smuggled into the garret of Dr. Handel’s house. At night, George would steal up to the attic and practise upon it. But not a tinkle could the watchful father hear. Before the child was seven years of age he had taught himself to play upon the dumb instrument.
One day Dr. Handel started to visit a son in the service of a German duke. George begged to go, as he wished to hear the organ in the duke’s chapel. But not until he ran after the coach did the father consent.
They arrived at the palace as a chapel service was going on. The boy stole away to the organ-loft, and, after service, began playing. The duke, recognizing that it was not his organist’s style, sent a servant to learn who was playing. The man returned with the trembling boy.