these democratic days any musician who feels humiliated by the struggle
for existence with its necessities for wire-pulling and log-rolling and
sly advertisement, and by the difficulty of stemming the tide of public
ignorance and indifference, let him remember that at least he is a free
man, and need lick nobody's boots; and let him cast an eye upon the
chronicles of shameful humiliation, childish deference, grovelling
servility, and whimsical reward or punishment, favour, or neglect, that
marked the "golden age" when musicians found patrons from whose conceit
or ennui they might wheedle a most uncertain living.

Among the most pathetic of such instances is that of Josse Boutmy
(1680--1779), court organist at Brussels, and famous in his day,--which
was a long day. When he was at the age of eighty and the father of
twelve children, he had to stoop to appeals for charity; again at
ninety-seven he appeals. At ninety-eight he pleads to be retired with a
pension; at ninety-nine he dies. Three days after his death his son is
asking a pension for the mother of that dozen children. She also writes
a pitiful letter still preserved.

"My husband, Judocus Boutmy, had the happiness of serving, for
thirty-five years, as first organist of the chapel of Your Highness.
Infirmities, the result of old age, and twelve children raised at great
cost, to enable them to earn their bread, have left me at his death in
indigence the greater since my son Laurent Boutmy, who for many years
gave with approbation assistance to his father, in the hope of
succeeding to his post, has been deprived of this boon by others.

"The hope of finding subsistence in the heritage of my ancestors made me
go back to Germany, where unhappily the death of my brothers, my
absence, the disorder of war, of law, and a faithless administration,