The sketch-books show that Beethoven was in the habit of working at several compositions at the same time; and the ideas for these are so jumbled up in his books that he himself apparently needed a guide to find them. At least, when ideas belonging together are widely separated he used to connect them by writing the letters VI over the first passage and DE over the second. He also used to write the word "better" in French on some pages, or else the figures 100, 500, 1,000, etc., probably, as Schindler thinks, to indicate the relative value of certain ideas. When his mind was in a creative mood, Beethoven was as completely absorbed (or "absent-minded," as we generally say) as Mozart. This is illustrated by an amusing trait described by his biographers. "Beethoven was extremely fond of washing. He would pour water backwards and forwards over his hands for a long time together, and if at such times a musical thought struck him and he became absorbed, he would go on until the whole floor was swimming, and the water had found its way through the ceiling into the room beneath" (Grove). Consequently, as may be imagined, he not infrequently had trouble with his landlord. He was constantly changing his lodgings, and always spent the summer in the country, where he did his best work. "In the winter," he once remarked to Rellstab, "I do but little; I only write out and score what I have composed in the summer. But that takes a long time. When I get into the country I am fit for anything." On account of his deafness, Beethoven affords a striking instance of the power musicians have of imagining novel sound effects which they never could have heard with their ears. In literature we blame a writer who, as the expression goes, "evolves his facts from his inner consciousness;" but in music this proceeding is evidence of the highest genius, because music has only a few elementary "facts" or prototypes, in nature. Beethoven was deaf at thirty-two. He never heard his "Fidelio," and for twenty-five years he could hear music only with the inner ear. But musicians are in one respect more fortunate than painters. If Titian had lost his eyesight, he could never have painted another picture; whereas Beethoven after losing his principal sense still continued to compose, better than ever. Mr. Thayer even thinks that from a purely artistic point of view Beethoven's deafness may have been an advantage to him; for it compelled him to concentrate all his thoughts on the symphonies in his head, undisturbed by the harsh noises of the external world. And that he did not forego the _delights_ of music is obvious from the fact that the pleasure of creating is more intense than the pleasure of hearing; and is, moreover illustrated by the great delight he felt in his later years when he read the compositions of Schubert (for he could not hear them) and found in them the evidence of genius, which he did not hesitate to proclaim.