e must be kept clear, otherwise the sound proceeding from it
will not be clear. I have known many instances of singers undergoing
very disagreeable operations on their throats for chronic diseases of
various descriptions; now, my observation and experience assure me
that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the root of the evil is
chronic inattention to food and raiment. It is a common thing to hear
a singer say, 'I never touch such-and-such food on the days I sing.'
My dear young friend, unless you are an absolute idiot, you would not
partake of anything on the days you sing which might disagree with
you, or over-tax your digestive powers; it is on the days you do not
sing you ought more particularly to exercise your judgment and
self-denial. I do not offer the pinched-up pilgarlic who dines off a
wizened apple and a crust of bread as a model for imitation; at the
same time, I warn you seriously against following the example of the
gobbling glutton who swallows every dish that tempts his palate."

Rossini, after he had composed _Guillaume Tell_, retired. He was
thirty-seven, a man in perfect health, and he lived thirty-nine years
longer, to the age of seventy-six, yet he never wrote another opera,
hardly indeed did he dip his pen in ink at all. These facts have
seriously disconcerted his biographers, who are at a loss to assign
reasons for his actions. W. F. Apthorp gives us an ingenious
explanation in "The Opera Past and Present." He says that after _Tell_
Rossini's pride would not allow him to return to his earlier Italian
manner, while the hard work needed to produce more _Tells_ was more
than his laziness could stomach.... Perhaps, but it must be remembered
that Rossini did not retire to his library or his music room, but to
his kitchen. The simple explanation is that he preferred cooking to
composing, a fact easy to believe (I myself vastly prefer cooking to
writing). He could cook _risotto_ better than any one else he knew. He
was dubbed a "hippopotamus in trousers," and for six years before he
died he could not see his toes, he was so fat. Sir Arthur Sullivan
relates an anecdote which shows that Rossini was conscious of his
grossness. Once in Paris Sullivan introduced Chorley to Rossini, when
the Italian said, "_Je vois, avec plaisir, que monsieur n'a pas de
ventre_." Chorley indeed was noticeably slender. Rossini could write
more easily, so his biographers tell us, when he was under the
influence of champagn