Another and even stranger thing took place for which I always have been at a loss to account. I had been in London but a few months, was quite unknown to the public, and it is altogether unlikely that I should have been heard of by the old phrenologist to whose quaint little book shop I was taken one evening somewhat against my will, but I am glad to have had an experience which has always remained a mystery to me.

We dived into a narrow street off Oxford Street, near the British Museum in Dickens land, and climbed a stairway littered with books, as was the passage from the front door. The old man, for all the world like the figure standing upon the top of the library ladder in the well-known picture called "The Book Worm," led us upstairs. His bald pate was covered with a black skullcap; his long broadcloth frock coat was so shiny that he could have seen himself in it, if he could have looked into his own back as well as he did into other people's brains. He was a gentle old soul, spoke quietly, confidentially, and almost affectionately to each of those who had sought him out, as they sat about the center table under the gaslight in his little parlor over the shop.

He walked about among us, quietly placing his hands upon the heads of each as he passed. When he had given each person a somewhat intimate review of his nature, he said that we were all surrounded by the spirits of those whom he called our guardians. Every other person in the room accepted his descriptions of relations or friends who had passed on, except myself, for I was unable to recognize the presence he minutely described as being my guide at the time. He said he saw an elderly, cleanshaven man with gray hair, dressed in a beautiful garment of red brocade with large puffed sleeves over a

lighter colored vest of satin, with a sword by his side and around his neck a heavy gold chain from which depended a great jeweled locket. I assured the old phrenologist there was no such person among my ancestors. My forefathers were, as I well knew, such as Michael Angelo declared his to be, "Simple persons who wore no gold on their garments." Standing with his eyes lifted ceilingward and gazing into vacancy, the old man persisted that he knew nothing about that and could only tell me what he saw.

I thought no more of the matter for a year and a half. Then, upon the occasion of my first professional appearance at the Royal English Opera in Shaftesbury Avenue in the opéra comique by Messenger entitled, "The Basoche," I, as the Duc de Longueville, found myself, though I had for years worn a beard from which I tried hard not to part, clean-shaven at last, and bewigged and costumed with sword and chain and locket every detail of the dress that the old phrenologist had described. Let who will explain this; I cannot.

CHAPTER X

CONCERTS IN LONDON

I do but sing because I must.

Tennyson.

My first actual appearance in London as a singer was upon February 23, 1890, at a concert in the rooms of the Grosvenor Gallery. That spring I sang there upon several occasions in association with well-known artists, among whom were Johannes Wolf, the violinist, and Joseph Holman, the 'cellist. It was there, too, that on April 15, I had the honor of bringing out at their first performance Stanford's magnificent "Cavalier Tunes," set to Browning's words for barytone solo and male chorus. I cannot too heartily recommend them to my barytone confrères.

I appeared on April 30, for the first time at the Orchestral Concerts at Crystal Palace under August Manns, and a fortnight later I was performing upon the stage of the Savoy Theatre in an operetta by Lady Arthur Hill called "The Ferry Girl," a charming little Irish story in which a number of well-known amateurs and ex-professionals took part for a charity in which the best of London society was interested. My work in this as Count Montebello attracted the attention of Ernest Ford, who was then composing a light opera called "Joan; or, The Brigands of Bluegoria," in which he asked me to perform, the book written by the brilliant Irish wit and parliamentarian, Robert Martin. It was given from