in Offenbach's "Sixty-Six," and in "Choufleuri," by the same composer. Most memorable to me of all these varied activities upon which my youthful energy was expended was my taking the part of the Apothecary in the remarkable travesty of "Romeo and Juliet" given at the Germantown Opera House on Friday evening, April 4, 1882, for the benefit of the Young America Cricket Club, and on other occasions also. Written by Charles C. Soule of St. Louis and first presented before the University Club of that city five years previously, its undergraduate buoyancy and witty rhymed dialogue secured from Horace Howard Furness, the distinguished editor of the Variorum Shakespeare, the high praise of being the best travesty of Shakespeare within his wide and profound knowledge.

During one of the performances I distinctly remember seeing my good friend, Mrs. Caspar Wister, the novelist, in the front row in company with her brother Doctor Furness, who was evidently amused by the performance, to which he listened with the aid of his ear trumpet, for he was, even at that time, growing very deaf.

The morning after, I received a letter from him asking me, if possible, to procure for him a copy of the libretto of our play in order that he might keep it in his famous collection of Shakespeareana. In his library at his house in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, he showed it to me years afterward, and I have seen the same book more than once in the same collection, now in Philadelphia, which was inherited by his son.

My own collection of memorabilia numbers by this time many volumes, and in looking these over I find that during the course of those years of unconscious preparation, I had arrived by way of sociables, reading circles, music with my father, and through affairs at college, to the little plays and operettas that I have mentioned; and through these, by degrees, to more important plays and more important music.

As I look at it now from a distance, such means of acquiring a knowledge of the stage and music as a profession is not by any means one to be followed by every other person; but it happens to have been what I did, and it led me to a professional life.

CHAPTER V

STEPPING-STONES

Music strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the First Composer. There is something in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers.- Sir Thomas Browne.

During all this time of activities upon the amateur stage, though most of my parts were spoken, it must not be supposed that my prime devotion to music fell into abeyance. On the contrary, as it was amateur singing that led to acting, so in the years soon to come it was my preparation for singing in oratorio that led me to the final combination of singing and acting on the operatic stage.

While I was in my uncle's wool house, I sought and found a vocal teacher, Edward Giles, an admirable basso, holding a position as organist in one of the city church choirs. To him I went frequently, using either my lunch hour or skipping off a little earlier in the afternoon and having a lesson with him before going home to supper. The drudgery of the wool business, which caused me to be at the store by eight o'clock, was wonderfully mitigated by the thought of the joy that would presently be mine, when I should be able to quit for the day and learn the great parts written by Handel, Haydn, and others of the master musicians.

Through Mr. Giles I was introduced to Michael Cross, the organist of the cathedral where Max Heinrich sang, and I soon became a member of the Orpheus Club, an aggregation of men with good voices who were glad to come together on Monday evenings to practice glees and part songs under the leadership of Cross, an enthusiast about such music. I lived through the week in anticipation of the rehearsals for these concerts, three of which were given at Musical Fund Hall each season.

This was the room in which Jenny Lind had sung when visiting Philadelphia, and she had then declared it one of the most perfect auditoriums in which she had ever lifted up her exquisite voice. My father and his sister had heard her and were never tired of speaking of the beauty of her singing. It appears that the crowds that assembled to hear her were so great that request was made in the newspapers that ladies should come without their crinolines in order that more persons might be seated in the hall.

Not until long after my younger days did people tire of speaking of Jenny Lind and the beauty of her art, only eclipsed by the later appearance of Adelina Patti. When a girl Patti had been a good deal in Philadelphia, where her kinsman Ettore Barili had been her master and was still teaching the art of singing. I was afterward to meet Madame Patti, and also Jenny Lind, when the latter was an old woman, a few years before her death.

Michael Cross became my musical guide, philosopher and friend, and as I was so keen about the rehearsals of the Orpheus Club he suggested that I should join the Arion, a similar club, holding its rehearsals and concerts in Germantown. I also belonged to a Madrigal Society and an Oratorio Society, the Cecilian, all under the direction of Cross, and about a year after I returned from Europe I found myself in the midst of musical affairs in Philadelphia, rehearsing under Cross's baton several times each week, and at the concerts of his clubs at least fifteen times a year. The more I sang the better I liked it and the less interest I had in business, which notwithstanding I stuck to for seven years.

It was because of my evidently serious interest in the art that Cross invited me to become a volunteer member of his new choir at Holy Trinity Church, Rittenhouse Square, where I sang from 1879 to 1882; and I am sorry that no particulars of the work done there have been kept. Suffice it to say that while Cross did not indulge in the more classical music of the Roman Catholic Church, yet in the quite "low" service of Holy Trinity he was able to use much of that of the Church of England, with which I became acquainted for the first time.

I soon became a proficient reader of vocal music, and was learning to play well upon the instrument called the human voice; though my unwieldy fingers would accommodate themselves to the keys of the piano as little as ever. Nearly every Saturday for several years I spent the evening at Cross's listening to him and his associates playing string quartettes, and though I could do nothing but admire their performances, I devoted myself with the greater assiduity to the cultivation of the gift which Heaven had been pleased to bestow upon me, studying enthusiastically with Cross the bass and barytone rôles in the best oratorios.

Frequently in those days I met Max Heinrich who heard me sing such songs as "The Erl King" and "The Two Grenadiers "; but, as he afterward confessed, he did not think I could ever make anything of myself as a singer.

On one occasion I had the opportunity of meeting Ulysses S. Grant. The Orpheus Club sang at a reception