"If it wasn't for my new bonnet strings, I wouldn't care," and Lois replied:
"Yes; but think how that rock looked when it let go and tumbled over. It was awful! I'm satisfied."
[HANDEL AND "THE MESSIAH."]
BY MRS. JOHN LILLIE.
On February 23, 1685, there was born in Halle, Saxony, to an honest surgeon named Handel, a son, whom he christened George Frederick, and who was destined half a century later to become the first musician in the world.
Little Handel's father abhorred music. As soon as the boy began to show an aptitude for it, his father took him away from school, for fear that some one would teach him his notes. Whether among teachers or scholars I don't know, but the boy found a friend who contrived to procure for him a little dumb spinet, and this he secreted in an attic, and learned not only his notes from it, but how to use his fingers in practicing. Still his father opposed him, and but for a certain visit he paid, his genius might have been long hidden in the dull house at Halle.
The elder Handel was invited to visit his son who was in the service of the great Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels, and young George, knowing music was to be heard, if not easily learned, in that place, determined to go too. So he ran after his father's carriage so far that the parent's stern heart relented, and he was taken in.
GEORGE FREDERICK HANDEL.