Volume 2 — Anecdotes of Haydn.

The great musician, Haydn, was the son of a wheelwright. His father used to play on the harp, and on holidays, his mother would sing while he played; and whenever the little boy heard this music, he would get two pieces of wood, like a violin and the bow that plays on it, and he would seem to be playing to his mother’s singing; and as long as he lived, Haydn loved to play the airs his mother then sung.

It happened that a relation of his parents, who was a schoolmaster, came to see them, and, thinking the child clever, he offered to bring him up, and his parents accepted the offer. When Haydn was at school, he found a tambourine, and played on it a tune so surprising, that everybody in the house came to listen to it.

He was afterwards taught to sing; and a person who understood good music well, coming to hear him, was so pleased with him, that he emptied a plate of cherries into his pocket.

Such was the beginning of this famous man, who composed many of the beautiful tunes with which we are all familiar.