His face softened, while he arose from his chair and came a few steps nearer to me.

“Only one or two human beings, so far as we know, have had musical powers equal to Beethoven.  Most men are satisfied if they can perform harmoniously his creations.”

“I could never do that.  I might by years of hard study get so far as to strike the correct notes, but the soul and expression would elude me, simply because I have not brain power sufficient to comprehend them.  A thrush would be foolish to emulate the nightingale.”

“Yes but some one might be gladdened by its own simple note,” he said, gently.

I was silent, while his words sank comfortably in my heart.

Looking up, at last, I caught his eye.

“I will try to be satisfied with my thrush’s note, and make the best of it.”

“That is right, but make sure that you are not any better song bird than the thrush, before you rest satisfied with its simple accomplishment.”

Very earnestly and sincerely I promised him to do my best, and then followed Mrs. Flaxman from the room.  Our escort proved to be Mr. Bovyer, a grave man, not so young as Mr. Winthrop, and who had a genuine passion for classic music.  I fancied from his name and partiality for German composers that he must be either directly or remotely of Teutonic origin.  Beethoven was his great favorite.  He averred that the latter had penetrated further into the mysteries of music than any other human being.  He seemed transformed while we sat listening to the great waves of harmony bewildering our senses; for, notwithstanding Mr. Winthrop’s prophecy, the concert was a success.  He had a stolid face.  One might take him almost for a retired, well-to-do butcher; but when the air was pulsating with delicious sounds, his face lighted up and grew positively handsome.

“I wonder how you will endure the music of the immortals, that God listens to, if you get with the saved by and bye?” I said, impulsively.

He shook his head doubtfully, but gave me at the same time a look of surprise.

“I do not ask for anything better than Beethoven,” he replied quietly.

Some way I felt saddened.  The Creator was so much beyond the highest object of his creative skill, even though that is or might be one so gloriously endowed as Beethoven; it seemed strange that a thinking, intellectual being would grasp the less when he might lay hold on the greater.  I glanced around on the gay, richly-dressed throng—­pretty women in garments as harmonious in form and color almost as the music that was thrilling at least some of us; some of them fair enough, I fancied, to be walking in a better world than ours; then, by some strange freak of the imagination, I fell to thinking of the poverty and sorrow, and breaking hearts all about us, until the music seemed to change to a minor chord; and away back of all other sounds I seemed to hear the sob and moan of the dying and broken-hearted.