The story which you are to read in this book and then write out in your own words is about a boy whose parents were neither well-to-do nor well known.
His name is George Frederick Handel. In Germany where Handel was born his name was Georg Friedrich Händel (pronounced Gay-org Freed-riesh Hayn-del). But the great composer spent so much of his life in England that people now use the English form of his name.
HANDEL'S BIRTHPLACE.
Look at this queer old house where the great master was born.
Handel was born in the same year as Johann Sebastian Bach, 1685.
The father was a surgeon and barber, a queer combination. We know that he did not like music, and that he was unwilling for his son to study it. Of the mother we know little. But we do know that she loved her little George Frederick, and helped him as far as she could.
The father was so determined that his son should not study music that he refused to let him go to school. He feared, no doubt, that the boy would soon learn to read notes.
But with the mother it was quite different. She observed the little boy's love of music.
In the Handel home there was a big roomy attic; the ceiling was low, and the windows had thick panes; the walls and floors were built of heavy timber, and silence reigned there.