Brahms thought well of everybody, if he thought of any one at all. He reveled in the sunshine, and everywhere made friends of children. "We saw Brahms on the hotel veranda at Domodossola," wrote a young woman to me in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five, "and what do you think?--he was on all fours, with three children on his back, riding him for a horse!" For many years Brahms used to make an annual pilgrimage to Italy, and often on these tours at fairs he would fall in with Gipsy bands. At such times he would always stop and listen, and would lustily applaud the performance. On one such occasion, Dietrich tells, the leader recognized Brahms, and instantly rapped for silence. He was seen to pass the whispered word along, and then the band struck up one of Brahms' pieces, greatly to the delight of the composer. He was a man of the people, and I am glad to know that he hated a table d'hote, smiled a smile of derision at all dress-coats, had small sympathy with pink teas, loved his friends, doted on babies, and was never so happy as when in the country walking along grass-grown lanes in the early summer morning, when the dew was on and the air was melodious with the song of birds. He had a habit of going bareheaded, carrying his hat in his hand; and on these country walks, always with bared head, he would sing or whistle, and unconsciously in his mind the music would be taking shape that was to be written out later in the quiet of his study. Brahms knew the world--not simply one little part of it--he knew it as thoroughly as any man can, and was interested in it all. He knew the world of workers--the toilers and bearers of burdens. He knew the weak and the vicious, and his heart went out to them in sympathy; for he knew his own heart and realized the narrow margin that separates the so-called "good" from the alleged "bad." He knew that sin is only a wrong expression of life, and reacts to the terrible disadvantage of the sinner. He was interested in mechanics--bookbinding, printing, iron-working, carpentry, and was well acquainted with all new inventions and labor-saving devices. He knew the methods of farming, the different breeds of cattle; he knew what soil would produce best a certain crop, and understood "rotation." He could call the wild birds by name and imitate their notes, and studied long their haunts and habits. That excellent man and talented, George Herschel, in a letter to a friend speaks of walking with Johannes Brahms along the highway, and Brahms suddenly calling in alarm, "Look out! look out! you may kill it!" It was only a tumblebug, but he shrank from putting foot on any living thing. Brahms reverenced all life, and felt in his heart that he was brother to that bug in the dust, to the birds that chirruped in the hedgerows, and to the trees that lifted their outstretching branches to the sun.