"All his friends," says Seyfried,
"recognized that in the art of laughter, Beethoven was a virtuoso of the
first rank." He often laughed aloud when nothing had occurred to excite
laughter, and would in such case ascribe his own thoughts and fancies as
the cause. Naive and simple as a child himself, he could only see the
naivete in the worthless compositions above referred to, and could not
understand the small ambition back of the pitiful effort. He often
unintentionally afforded equally great amusement to others by his own
naivete. Thus he once told Stein, of the noted family of pianoforte
makers that some of the strings in his Broadwood were out of order or
lacking, and to illustrate it, caught up a bootjack and struck the keys
with it. Ries states that Beethoven several times in his awkwardness
emptied the contents of the ink-stand into the piano. On this same piano
the master was often begged to improvise. The instrument was a present
from the manufacturers, and when made, was probably the best example of
its kind extant.
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