LISZT'S HAND
There is one thing true for us all. We carry our early thoughts along with us all through life. The friends we make from youth and the thoughts we think from youth are always at hand to bless us if we have done wisely.
Once when little Franz was thirteen years old he played before the English King, George IV. Sixty years later we see him again, once more the guest of the English people.
It is pleasant to think of Liszt meeting again and again the friends of his boyhood. When he went to England, on this occasion, he was quite an old man. As he stepped out upon the stage to play, for the last time, everybody, even the people outside of the hall, who could not get in, shouted themselves hoarse. Those within rose to greet him with tears and cheers that are given only to the kings of the earth.
LISZT IN LATER LIFE
While we know of this artist chiefly as a great pianist, we shall learn, as we grow older, that he was a great composer as well. He wrote music for piano, for orchestra, for the voice. There are symphonies, masses, oratorios and cantatas. Once, as a boy, he met Franz Schubert in Vienna. In later years he arranged many of Schubert's songs in a truly beautiful way for the piano,—songs like the "Erl King," "Thou Art My Peace," "Hark, Hark the Lark."
So we may end by saying that Franz Liszt was a great man who remained simple and big-hearted all his life, and one whom the world loved for what he did.
