"When the orchestra had played the introductory Tutti, and I had to begin the Solo,--suddenly it becomes misty before my eyes, my whole body trembles, I cannot see the notes clearly, cannot command my fingers, cannot manage the bow. We begin again, and a third time; but it is not much better, although we make some progress. By degrees I become more collected; still my playing remains a wretched attempt to the end, provoking the suppressed and loud laughter of the musicians. None of the somewhat difficult passages, which I knew by heart, could I play. I am not a _virtuoso_ on the violin; but if one has attained a certain dexterity, one must be able to play those pieces which one has properly learnt. Thus this rehearsal enriched my psychology, inasmuch as it served me as an example for the proposition:--It is very difficult, if not impossible, to appear in later years before the public in a capacity in which one has not appeared in early youth. The fear for the teacher suppresses in youth the shyness for the public, and accustoms us to resist it, and not allow it to become an obstacle. The fear for the teacher is a support which later we miss, while the shyness which overcomes us is all the stronger since we have learnt the value of the opinion which formerly concentrated only in the teacher, and with which we were well acquainted beforehand. While as a singer and a declamator I feel the most at my ease when I appear before a large audience, at the rehearsal, in the presence of an orchestra only, I could not play a violin concerto, merely because the former I have done in public from early youth, and this never before." The proceeds of his concerts he divided into two equal portions, one of which he regularly forwarded after the concert to the relief fund for the wounded soldiers, retaining the other half to defray his travelling expenses. But his concerts were often so thinly attended that they realized no proceeds to divide, and hardly sufficient means for his subsistence. He feared to come into suspicion of having appropriated to himself more than his due; and he felt vexed at the implications which he sometimes thought he detected in the remarks of strangers, intimating that the wounded soldiers were of more use to him than he to them.