The child sat down, and with an impatient little gesture and half-smile at the audience, played the piece exactly as Zelter had played it, with a certain drawling style that was all Zelter's own. It was so funny that the listeners burst into shouts of laughter. But the boy instantly restored order by striking the bass a strong stroke with both hands, running the scale, and weaving that simple little air into the most curious variations. For ten minutes he played, bringing in Zelter's little tune again and again, and then Zelter in a voice of pretended wrath cried, "Cease that tin-pan drumming and play something worth while." Goethe arose, stroked the boy's pretty brown curls, kissed him on the forehead and said: "Yes, play something worth while. I know you two rogues--you have been practising on that piece for a year or more, and now you pretend to be improvising--I'll see whether you can play!" And going to a portfolio he took out a manuscript piece of music written out in the fine, delicate hand of Mozart, and placed it on the music-rack of the piano. Felix played the piece as if it were his own; and then laying it aside, went back and played it through from memory. Then piece after piece was brought out for him to play, and Zelter leaned back and by his manner said, "Oh, it is nothing!" And certainly it was nothing to the boy--he played with such ease that his talent was quite unknown to himself. He had not yet discovered that every one could not produce music just as they could talk. Goethe's admiration for the boy was unbounded. The two weeks of Mendelssohn's prescribed visit had expired and Goethe begged for an extension of two weeks more. Every evening there was the little impromptu concert. After that Felix paid various visits to Weimar. Goethe's house was his home, and the affection between the old poet and the young musician was very gentle and very firm. "All souls are of one age," says Swedenborg. Goethe was seventy-three and Mendelssohn thirteen when they first met, but very soon they were as equals--boys together. Goethe was a learner to the day of his passing: he wanted to know. In the presence of those who had followed certain themes further than he had, he was as an eager, curious child. When Goethe was seventy-eight and Mendelssohn eighteen, they spent another month together; and a regular program of instruction was laid out. Each morning at precisely nine, they met for the poet's "music lesson," as Goethe called it, and the boy would play from some certain composer, showing the man's peculiar style, and the features that differentiated him from others. Goethe himself has recorded in his correspondence that it was Felix Mendelssohn who taught him of Hengstenberg and Spontini, introduced him to Hegel's "AEsthetics," and revealed to him for the first time the wonders of Beethoven. Can you not close your eyes and see them--the mighty giant of fourscore, with his whitened locks, and the slight, slender, handsome boy?