there are a number of very useless stones in the midst of the
footpath. Now, as it happens in conversation that I more frequently
look up than down, she always walks behind me and gently pulls my coat
at every stone, lest I may fall."

It was most fortunate for Schumann that his bride and wife was one of
the greatest living pianists. For, owing to the accident to his hand,
though he could still improvise, he could not appear in public to
interpret his own compositions, which depended so much for their
success on a sympathetic performance, since they differed so greatly
from the prevalent style of Hummel and the classical masters, that
even so gifted a musician as Mendelssohn failed to understand them.
But Clara made it the task of her life to secure him recognition, and
this was an additional bond that united their souls. "When you are
mine," he writes, "you will occasionally hear something new from me; I
believe you will often inspire me, and the mere fact that I shall then
frequently hear my own compositions will cheer me up;" and: "Your
Romance showed me once more that we must become man and wife. Every
one of your thoughts comes from my soul, even as I owe all my music
to you." To Dorn he writes that many of his compositions, including
the Noveletten, the Kreisleriana, and the Kinderscenen, were inspired
by Clara; and it is well known that his love became the incentive to
the composition, in one year, of over a hundred wonderful songs--his
previous compositions, up to 1840, having all been for the piano
alone. In the last letter of this collection he says: "Sometimes it
appears to me as if I were treading entirely new paths in music;" and
there are many other passages showing that he realized well that the
very things which his contemporaries criticised and decried as
eccentric and obscure (Hummel, _e.g._, objects to his frequent changes
of harmony and his originality!), were really his most inspired