In his essay on "Friendship," Emerson speaks of the folly of forcing our personal presence on the friend we love best, and of the faith that ideality brings. Something of this thought is shown in the letters of Madame Schumann to Brahms, and in his to her. Often for six months they would not meet, he doing his work in his own way, she doing hers, but each ever conscious of the life and love of the other--feeding on the ideal--writing or not writing, but glorying in each other's triumphs--lives linked first by the love of a third person, cemented by dire calamity, and then fused by a oneness of hope and aspiration. Brahms' nature was too decidedly masculine, that is to say, one-sided, to exist without the love of woman; Clara Schumann, gentle, generous, motherly, plastic, needed Johannes no less than he needed her. When Clara's spirit passed away, in May, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-six, Brahms attended her funeral at Frankfort. Hero that he was in body and spirit, the shock unnerved him. No rebound came--every bodily faculty seemed to have lost its buoyancy. The doctors tried to cheer him by telling him that he had no organic ailment, and that twenty years of life and work were before him. He knew better, and told them so. Men do not live any longer than they wish to. "Shall I live to see the anniversary of her death?" asked Brahms of the doctor in March, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-seven. "Oh, undoubtedly--you can live many years if you only will to," was the answer. Three weeks later--on April Third--Max Kalbrech telegraphed to Widmann, this message, "Brahms fell asleep early this morning." SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GREAT MUSICIANS," BEING VOLUME FOURTEEN OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: EDITED AND ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS, AND PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: The index covers the complete set of "Little | |Journeys" books. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ INDEX (_Compiled for Wm. H. Wise & Co., by John T. Hoyle, Managing Editor "The Fra" Magazine._) Abbey, Edwin A., birth of, vi, 305; evolution of the art of, vi, 312; work of, in the Boston Public Library, vi, 323; studio of, vi, 322; George W. Childs and, vi, 309; Henry James on, vi, 311. Abbotsford, home of Sir Walter Scott, iv, 321. Abbott, John S. C., iii, 7; his life of Napoleon, vi, 129. Abbott, Lyman, on H. W. Beecher, vii, 378. Abildgaard, the painter, Thorwaldsen and, vi, 105. Ability, a bucolic estimate of, viii, 173. Abnegation, v, 243. Abolition, v, 205; in New England, vii, 408. Abraham, x, 19. _Abraham_, Rembrandt's, iv, 63. Abstinence, v, 248. _Account of the English Poets_, Addison, v, 246.