der to dispose of the stock, the makers erased from the pedestal his name, and substituted that of George Washington, whom they held in the highest esteem even though he had just defeated them at the game of war. My Franklin figure bears the name of Washington. With the change the remainder of the stock sold like hot cakes!

One of my most interesting programs of the season in 1902 is that of the grand British and American Festival Peace Concert in commemoration of the South African war, at Crystal Palace, under the conductorship of Frederick Cowan. The Handel Festival Choir and orchestra of 3000 performers rendered various numbers, while the soloists, alternately American and English, were headed by the name of Madame Albani, who being a Canadian was both American and English, followed by Ella Russell, American; Clara Butt, British; Belle Cole, American; Ben Davies, British; myself, American; and Charles Santley, the grand old man of the vocal world, British, thoroughly British. How the audience did love him, how they rose to him when he appeared, and how they applauded him to the echo when he sang!

The program contained the portraits of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra and of President Theodore Roosevelt. May we Americans never fall out with our noble and high-minded kinsmen across the water in the little island from which so many of us have sprung, but may we, on the contrary, assist the sons of that far-flung race to maintain the peace of the world!

I am proud to say that my own countrymen were asking for my services more than ever, but I did not return to America until I had filled an engagement once more at the Sheffield Festival under the conductorship of Henry Wood, now universally recognized by the English as one of their real geniuses of the baton. Though I gave three of my own recitals at St. James's Hall in the summer of 1902, I sang little more after that time till 1906, when I produced "The Vicar of Wakefield" in England. It was a regret for me to leave a country where for so long I had been so well received. At two of the three concerts to which I have alluded I repeated Strauss's melodrama "Enoch Arden," with my version of Tennyson's poem and also introduced a number of Strauss's songs, including the "Hymnus" and "Pilgers Morgenlied," these colorful rhapsodies contrasting strangely with, but not at all to the disadvantage of, Handel's duet from "Israel in Egypt," "The Lord is a Man of War," which I rendered with the brilliant Ffrangçon Davies.

Ere long I began to make acquaintance with the songs of Hugo Wolf, some of which I ventured to bring before the public, which has at length accepted them and would do well to look more carefully into their manifold beauties, though many of them seem to be the result of a mental abnormality. To a greater extent this is true of Claude Debussy, who was driven almost insane by the overtones he alone could hear, but which led him at last to write his master work, the opera "Pelléas and Mélisande."

The composer Ernest Bloch has told me of his friendship with Richard Strauss and Debussy and of their manner of working. The former, having finished an orchestral score, does not rest content till he has added still more contrapuntal devices, piling complication upon complication; whereas Dubussy was not satisfied until he had taken out of his score as many notes as possible and simplified it to the last degree.

While the vocal score of Debussy's "Pelléas and Méli

sande " was in my possession for some years it remained quite uncomprehended. When at last I heard the work with Mary Garden as the heroine, I sat entranced. I knew not whether I was awake or asleep, whether an old Bayeux tapestry had come to life before my eyes, whether I was witnessing music or listening to pictures, so magical was the effect upon me of this Old-World tale told in terms of tones tense, tender, tragic, translucent, transcendental!

Quite otherwise was I affected by the music of another modern. As the sounds proceeded I seemed to have a vision. I thought I was in Verona, on top of the roof of an ancient villa surmounted with Ghibelline battlements of dark-red brick, beyond which tall, dark-green cypress trees reared their heads and swayed in the wind of an oncoming storm. It was night, with the moon, riding high in a purple sky, sailing in and out of the clouds. Presently, a cat emerged from the shadows and stood waiting on the middle of the roof. His feline call was matched by a wail of the wind. Another cat appeared, and the two had a pitched battle, as the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled in the distance. There followed a calm; the moon shone forth in glory; while an exquisite melody arose from somewhere; but soon discord began again, and in the midst of the fury of the storm the cats fought to a finish. I awoke to the fact that I was in a fashionable London drawing-room and that a quartette of Max Reger's had just come to an end.

Some time ago I attended an orchestral concert at which I heard a well-known soprano sing on the first half of the program a pearly Mozart number which she rendered exquisitely. Later in the evening, she gave an ultra-modern composition which sounded to me like nothing in the world so much as a madwoman singing a song by a crazy man at an insane asylum concert. During the closing bars of the piece I again had one of my sudden visions and was aware that a heavily laden motor truck had run over a whole family of innocent children.

Though it is impossible to forecast the tendency of modern music, which in the hands of futurists seems to presage insanity, yet in my own practice as well as in my preachments I strive to inculcate in others a knowledge of, and love for, the classics of song. These we must know and learn to sing, for it is well-nigh impossible to comprehend the most advanced vocal music of to-day.

CHAPTER XXXV

WOMAN AND SONG

Man has his will, but woman has her way.

- Holmes.

As in years before, I began the autumn season of 1902 with a concert tour. The end of November found me in New York again, singing my familiar parts at the Metropolitan, including occasionally the rôle of Iago, of which I have never had enough. Several performances of "The Niebelungen Ring" were given under Alfred Hertz, in which Alberich was once more assigned to me.

The outstanding figures in the minds of that generation of Wagner lovers were the Erda and Waltraute of Madame Schumann-Heink; the Brünnhilde of Madame Nordica; the Sieglinde of Madame Gadski and Madame Eames; the Wotan of Van Rooy; the Loge of Van Dyck; the Mime of Reiss; and the Hagen of Edouard de Reszke, though there were other famous men and women in the company brought together by Grau, during what proved to be his final season in New York and London. After him came Conried and a deluge of talent unknown to New York, while a dozen of us who were still prime favorites with the public were not reëngaged. Thus came to an end an aggregation of artists which had been together so long as to be looked upon as having created an epoch in operatic annals.

After all I cannot say that I was entirely neglected by the little man who had been so successful in his manage