wishes; that, after the year-long care and thought they had bestowed
on him, he should demand fresh efforts from them; and, again, most
harassing of all and most invulnerable, such an entire want of faith
in the powers he was yearning to test--the prophet's lot in the mean
blindness of the family--that, at times, it threatened to shake his
hard-won faith in himself.--But before the winter drew to a close he
was away.

Away!--to go out into the world and be a musican--that was his longing
and his dream. And he never came to quite an honest understanding with
himself on this point, for desire and dream were interwoven in his
mind; he could not separate the one from the other. But when he
weighed them, and allowed them to rise up and take shape before him,
it was invariably in this order that they did so. In reality, although
he himself was but vaguely conscious of the fact, it was to some
extent as means to an end, that, when his eyes had been opened to its
presence, he clutched--like a drowning man who seizes upon a
spar--clutched and held fast to his talent. But the necessary insight
into his powers had first to be gained, for it was not one of those
talents which, from the beginning, strut their little world with the
assurance of the peacock. He was, it is true, gifted with an
instinctive feeling for the value and significance of tones--as
a child he sang by ear in a small, sweet voice, which gained him the
only notice he received at school, and he easily picked out his notes,
and taught himself little pieces, on the old-fashioned, silk-faced
piano, which had belonged to his mother as a girl, and at which, in
the early days of her marriage, she had sung in a high, shrill voice,
the sentimental songs of her youth. But here, for want of incentive,
matters remained; Maurice was kept close at his school-books, and,
boylike, he had no ambition to distinguish himself in a field so