In the neighboring town of Hainburg there lived a schoolmaster named Frankh, who used to visit the Haydns and play the violin. Sepperl used to watch him very closely, and one day he, too, began to play the violin while his father and mother were singing. But he had no real violin, of course, so he had to play on a make-believe one of two sticks. But he sang in tune and kept time with his wooden bow.
[Illustration: SEPPERL PLAYING ON TWO STICKS]
One day the schoolmaster chanced to come up the street while the little boy was playing his make-believe music. Watching him closely, he saw that he was really fond of music.
Then Cousin Frankh, as they called him, had a long talk with Sepperl's father and mother. After a while it was agreed that the little boy should go to Hainburg (the place you found on the map), and there become a pupil of the schoolmaster.
They worked hard at the school in those days. Once, when Haydn was an old man, he said: "I shall be grateful to that man (the schoolmaster) as long as I live, for keeping me so hard at work. But I used to get more floggings than food."
When he was six years old, Sepperl could "stand up like a man" and sing masses in the church choir, besides playing a little on the piano and the violin.
It once happened that a drummer was needed in a procession in Hainburg. Frankh called Sepperl, and showed him how to make the stroke. But the boy was so small that someone had to carry the drum for him, Sepperl following up and beating it as he had been taught. Haydn was very fond of playing the drums, and even as a boy tried to learn how to play right.
One day a man from Vienna visited the pastor of the Hainburg Church. He heard the little boy sing and liked his voice so much that he invited him to become a chorister in the huge Church of St. Stephen. He was eight years old when he arrived in the great city of Vienna, still a little farther away from home than he was at Hainburg.
There was much else to do in the great church beside singing in the choir. There were music studies, of course, in singing, violin and piano playing. But there were also school studies to be learned every day. These were Religion, Latin, Writing and Arithmetic.
But one must not think that because Sepperl was a busy musician he did not love fun like other boys of eight. One day the choristers sang at the Royal Palace at Schoenbrunn, just outside of Vienna. The scaffolding was still standing about the building, and Joseph climbed to the top. The Empress Maria Theresa caught him at this mischief and gave an order that "that blockhead should have a good spanking."