1905.] on Personal Recollections of Johannes Brahms. 149 



D-miuor movement of his " Requiem." . ..." I sometimes regret," 

 he said to me, after some moments of silence, " that I did not marry. 

 I ought to have a boy of ten now ; that ivoulcl be nice. But when I 

 was of the right age for marrying, I lacked the position to do so, and 

 now it is too late." 



Speaking of this had probably revived in him reminiscences of his 

 own boyhood, for he continued : " Only once in my life have I played 

 truant and shirked school, and that was the vilest day of my life. 

 When I came home, my father had already been informed of it, and 

 I got a solid hiding. But still," he said, " my father was a dear old 

 man, very simple-minded and unsophisticated, of which I must tell 

 you an amusing example. 



" You know he was double-bass player in the Municipal Orchestra 

 of Hamburg, and also copied music. 



"He was sitting in his room at the top of the house one day, with 

 the door wide open, busily engaged copying music, when in walked a 

 tramp, begging. My father looked up at him quietly, and, in his nice 

 Hamburg dialect, said, ' I cannot give you anything, my dear man. 

 Besides, don't you know that it is very wrong of you to come into a 

 room like this ? How easily might you not have taken my overcoat 

 which is hanging in the hall ! Get out ! ' The tramp humbly 

 apologised and withdrew. When a few hours later my father wanted 

 to go out, the overcoat, of course, was gone ! " He then touched 

 upon his relations to the members of his family, and told me he still 

 supported his old stepmother. With his sister he had little in 

 common ; their interests had always been too far apart. Between 

 his brother, whom he had likewise supported, and himself, there 

 existed no intercourse whatever. 



The other day I happened to hum the andante from his " Quartet 

 in C minor." He seemed rather to like my doing so, for when it 

 came to the place : — 





he accompanied my humming with gentle movements of his hand, as 

 if beating time to it. At last he smilingly said : " Well, I am not at 

 all ashamed to own that it gives me the keenest pleasure if a song, 

 an adagio, or anything of mine, has turned out particularly good. 

 How must those gods. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc., have felt whose 

 daily bread it was to write things like the ' Matthew Passion,' ' Don 

 Giovanni,' ' Fidelio,' ' Ninth Symphony ! ' What I cannot understand is 

 how people like myself can be vain. As much as we men, who walk 

 upright, are above the creeping things of the earth, so these gods are 

 above us. If it were not so ludicrous it would be loathsome to me 



