Note 92 — THE HOME OF LEPSIUS.

Frau Lepsius was the daughter of the celebrated composer, Klein, and many a friend of music will be glad to hear all that her aunts in Cologne related to Frau Elizabeth, regarding the early history of her father, when she visited them at Berlin in 1856. He was the son of a musician who died suddenly, and left his wife and children, the youngest only seven months old, without means. At that time Bernard Klein was twenty-one years old, and immediately announced that he should support his mother and brothers and sisters by giving music lessons. He did this faithfully and with serene confidence in better days to come. The mother always had to care for his clothes, for he paid no attention to his external appearance. He once visited a friend who complained that he had no coat. He gave him his own in entire faith that he had two, but when he got home he found that he had made a mistake, and must buy himself a new one. As a child he had wished to become a merchant, and not to learn music, but he was suddenly seized by a passion for music, and said to his mother: “Now if I had become a merchant, and were so rich that I could drive four horses, I would rather be a music teacher.” Not long after his father’s death he went to Paris with Begas for two years, and there studied music under Cherubini. In 1818 he went to Berlin. Ten years after, as a famous composer, he returned to Berlin, to be present at a great musical festival, at which his “Jephta” was performed with great applause.