high-road to wide fame, she finds everything sordid and uncertain. She is at the mercy of flippant cads who would tell any lie to make a criticism readable. She is at the mercy of the cruel whims of audiences. She may find that she has every quality except an inexplicable magnetism and the ability to excite curiosity and draw crowds. Worse yet, she is at the mercy of her instrument as no other musician is. The slightest change in weather, a bit of bad news, an extra physical exertion, any derangement of mind or body or outer world, may incapacitate her from doing herself jus

tice, and bring on her that bitterest of humiliations, the displeasure of the public. And she is eternally subject to the rivalries and jealousies of her fellowartists, at once the most irritable and the most violent genus on earth.

But if any earthly career is worth the trials that attend it, that of the singer is. One's art is there all one's own; it is doubly one's self that triumphs, that thrills and is thrilled.

The American woman dominates the world in no way so much as by her singing. She has had the courage to fight the long fight and she has the

Miss Caroline Montefiore. Photograph by Schloss, New York.

grace to hold her sway. Many of our fellow-countrywomen find the foreign world even more faithful to their worth than the pusillanimous American spirit; and so they stay abroad. The famous Mme. Albani is one of the chief of these. She is about to make a tour of Australia. Miss Ella Russell, the dramatic soprano, is possibly the favorite singer of the English, and she is not widely known over here, though she hails from Cleveland, Ohio.

The name Mlle. Jeanne Gréta conceals the identity of an American soprano who has been practically unheard in this country, though she has sung with distinguished success in Paris, London, and the chief cities of England and Scotland. Mlle. Gréta's teachers have been Gottschalk, of Chicago, Agra

monte, of New York, and de la Grange and Criticos, of Paris. Her voice is a glowing soprano. She has a superb stage presence, and sings with remarkable ease and dramatic fire. And a future of pre-eminent fame has been predicted for her by those who speak with authority.

Of the singers that have stayed at home and found acceptance and support here, none is better known than Miss Mary Louise Clary, the Kentucky contralto. Her real début was as Delilah in Saint-Saëns's "Samson and Delilah," under the direction of Mr. Walter Damrosch. She has since appeared with the Thomas and other orchestras and in oratorio. Though I have never had the privilege of hearing her sing anything but "Ben Bolt" in the production of "Trilby," I cannot help thinking her voice the most glorious contralto of her day. She gave the hackneyed melody a positive grandeur, and her tone resembles nothing so much as the old-time viola da gamba, which one hears now only at the Ancient Instruments Concerts in Paris, and which ought not to have yielded so completely to the modern violoncello.

From Maine, which gave us Cary and Nordica, comes Miss Lillian Carllsmith, a contralto of whom many good things are said. At the age of nineteen she made her début in oratorio, singing the solo contralto part in J. K. Paine's "The Nativity." She studied abroad with Henschel and Randegger, and sang with éclat in London. A most praiseworthy characteristic of her recitals is the space they give to American composers.

One of the best tests of a singer's

August 1, 1897.

I

THE CONQUERING POWER OF MEMORY

F

It

RIDAY, September 23, 1897. was only a little china tray, the end of a cigarette, and a small pile of ashes; and yet-ye gods! what memories are mine at sight of them! My hand is on the tray to empty it; I change my mind; this piece of cigarette, and those scattered ashes, have a fascination. What an apt illustration, they are, of life; and of that evening, when the form of that cigarette was changed to ashes. Back upon the little white shelf of the what-not, tenderly, almost lovingly, I set them. They are all I have left of a pleasure; and my friend is over a hundred miles away, and, man-like, has forgotten his playmate in babyhood, his school-mate in youth, his friend of the past few weeks. It is the 23d of September, and the equinox is upon us. All day long the rain has fallen in torrents; yes, it has come down in veritable sheets of water. All day long thoughts have tormented me, as dark and dismal as the clouds and gloom on the outside. I wrestle through the long hours of the day, and when night comes, I am resolved to spend a cosey evening. I am resolved to drive these "blues away. How I plan for this good time alone with my books.

I say to myself-I know what I will do. I will go to my favorite spot in the home, my snug little den with its dainty pink and white paper clinging to the wall, its quaint old-fashioned what-not, painted white, to match the trimmings of the room, and on its three shelves photographs of dead and living friends. And of relics, too, there are not a few, stuck here and there in every available space and crevice. The great book-case filled with the best of good books, the wealth of whose knowledge I can make my own, as much my own, as though I had been the origin, a Shakespeare, Tennyson, Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes or Hawthorne; for, with the mammoth brains of these great men, the thought must needs come before the form and can not I master and make mine both form and thought?

:

The comfortable broad couch, whose deep springs give way and adjust themselves to every curve and line of the human form is here. The little mahogany writing-desk stands in its accustomed corner. What notes I have written from this desk! Notes bubbling over with heart-felt joy and filled with the best of good wishes, to friends who for the sake of their mutual love, will walk through life together, "for better or for worse": notes of congratulation for some wee life come to brighten the home and tie, in a closer