entering a fruit shop to eat peaches, nectarines,
and a pineapple, was really what stimulated him to study for a career
on the stage. "While my mouth watered, I asked myself why, if I
assiduously studied music, I should not be able to earn money enough
to lounge about in fruit-shops, and eat peaches and pineapples as
well as Signor St. Giorgio...."

Lillian Russell is a good cook. I can recommend her recipe for the
preparation of mushrooms: "Put a lump of butter in a chafing dish (or
a saucepan) and a slice of Spanish onion and the mushrooms minus the
stems; let them simmer until they are all deliciously tender and the
juice has run from them--about twenty minutes should be enough--then
add a cupful of cream and let this boil. As a last touch squeeze in
the juice of a lemon." When Luisa Tetrazzini was going mad with a
flute in our vicinity she varied the monotony of her life by sending
pages of her favourite recipes to the Sunday yellow press.
Unfortunately, I neglected to make a collection of this series. A
passion for cooking caused the death of Naldi, a buffo singer of the
early Nineteenth Century. Michael Kelly tells the story: "His ill
stars took him to Paris, where, one day, just before dinner, at his
friend Garcia's house, in the year 1821, he was showing the method of
cooking by steam, with a portable apparatus for that purpose;
unfortunately, in consequence of some derangement of the machinery, an
explosion took place, by which he was instantaneously killed." Almost
everybody knows some story or other about a _virtuoso_, trapped into
dining and asked to perform after dinner by his host. Kelly relates
one of the first: "Fischer, the great oboe player, whose minuet was
then all the rage ... being very much pressed by a nobleman to sup
with him after the opera, declined the invitation, saying that he was
usually much fatigued, and made it a rule never to go out after the
evening's performance. The noble lord would, however, take no denial,
and assured Fischer that he did not ask him professionally, but merely
for the gratification of his society and conversation. Thus urged and
encouraged, he went; he had not, however, been many minutes in the
house of the consistent nobleman, before his lordship approached him,
and said, 'I hope, Mr. Fischer, you have brought your oboe in your
pocket.'--'No, my Lord,' said Fischer, 'my oboe never sups.' He turned
on his heel, and instantly left the house, and no persuasion could