WORLDLY WISDOM



Mozart's father brought him up to be worldly wise. While
journeying at a tender age through the world with his father the
lad became an eye witness of the paternal business management
with all its attention to detail; of the art of utilizing persons
and conditions in order to achieve material results. As a youth
he repeats the journeys accompanied by his mother whom he loses
by death in Paris. Regularly from Salzburg his father sends him
letters full of admonitions and advice, the subjects almost
systematically grouped. The worldly wisdom of the son is the
fruit of paternal education, which he did not outgrow up to the
day of his death. But life, experience, was also an educator; a
seeming distrust of mankind speaks out of many a passage in his
letters, but on the whole he thought too well of his fellow men,
and remained blind to the faults of his false friends who basely
exploited him for their own ends. Although gifted with keen
powers of observation he always followed his kind heart instead
of his better judgment and his sister spoke no more than the
truth when she said after his death: "Outside of music he was,
and remained, nearly always, a child. This was the chief trait of
his character on its shady side; he always needed a father,
mother, or other guardian."

202. "Reflect, too, on this only too certain truth: it is not