The autographs of musicians who in life could not write a check
for a crust of bread have in death been sold for fabulous sums.
Not long ago at a sale in Berlin two of Beethoven’s letters
sold for $187 and $200 each. A letter of Chopin brought $250,
a visiting-card of Haydn $20 and a letter $427, two letters of
Schubert $777, four letters of Wagner $322, a scrap of writing
of Mozart sold for $276, while a Gluck manuscript changed hands
at $1,000. Some of these men in life hardly received enough for
their services to keep their musical souls connected with their
emaciated bodies; but they wasted themselves in pouring out
their immortal melodies, and this generation is putting down its
gold for mere scraps of paper that had felt the touch of their
dead hands! Of course, their service and music are not lost; but
look! God does not even allow the screeds of paper, which were
once crumpled by their perished fingers, to be lost, either!
While their music is filling the world with its sweetness God is
even picking up the tattered, torn, broken fragments blown by
cruel winds up and down the desert of their lives, that nothing
be lost!--F. F. SHANNON.
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