He had to go out early to fight his way in the world; only six
years of peaceful village life, free from care and responsibility, were
allowed him. Those first years, I take it, were happy enough. Mathias
was only, it is true, a wheelwright, and in time there were a dozen
mouths to feed. But we hear of him and Maria making music only in the
evenings; his days were more profitably occupied. It goes very much
without saying that he was not rich--in what age or clime are working
wheelwrights rich?--but he cannot be called poor. Poverty is a
comparative term; even to-day peasants feel its biting teeth only when
they desert or are driven from their country-side, and make for the
overcrowded towns. Joseph, but for a few accidents, might have remained
a peasant all his days, and never faced what he would consider hardship.
The first accident was his voice, which was undoubtedly of singular
beauty; the second was an extraordinary musical aptitude, which led him
to sing expressively and perfectly in tune the airs he heard his father
and mother sing. Mathias, by the way, accompanied himself on the harp;
and Joseph, long before he had a fiddle of his own, imitated the
fiddling of his elders with two bits of wood, so the family orchestra
was complete.
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