as intensely nervous
just then, and went nowhere.

The Czar was to leave Darmstadt on the Monday, and on Sunday we were to
sing "Meistersinger" for him. The day before I had felt frightfully ill,
and suffered as I had been doing for several weeks with pains in my
side. Sunday morning I sent for a doctor, the pain being so bad I was
afraid I would not be able to get through the performance that night.
The doctor in turn sent for the surgeon, who packed me off in an hour to
the hospital for an appendicitis operation. The next morning I was
operated upon, and they told me the Grand Duke had sent to ask how I
was, as the Czar wished to know if the operation was successful before
he left town. I thought it showed a charming, kindly thoughtfulness of
others.

The nurses were all most kind to me in the hospital, but the surgeon was
utterly uninterested in anything but the healing of the wound itself,
and paid absolutely no attention to the other rather distressing
occurrences of my illness. One could see that a highly strung, nervous
American woman would have fared badly with him.

Sazonoff was with the Czar's suite, and I remember the Darmstadtites
were much insulted because he always took the train to Frankfurt half an
hour away, or to Wiesbaden (one hour), for luncheon or dinner, as he
said there was nothing fit to eat at the local hotels. I secretly quite
agreed with him.

We often went ourselves to Frankfurt for tea, or a wild American craving
would come over me for lobster or chicken salad, and we would up and
away to Wiesbaden for supper. Darmstadt was very conveniently situated
for short trips, surrounded as it is by interesting towns--Heidelberg
only a short distance south of us, or Mannheim close enough for a day's
visit. I sang _Niklaus_ in "Hoffmann" in Mannheim for the first time
without a rehearsal, having learnt the part in my room at the piano
without a Kapellmeister to give me the _tempi_, and never having seen
the opera. That was a trying experience, not helped by the tenor
knocking me flat down in the Venetian scene as I rushed on to tell him
that the watch was coming. He weighed about two hundred and fifty
pounds, and colliding with him in midcareer, I gave him right of way by
going down flat on my back.

At Frankfurt we heard a wonderful performance of "Elektra" with Richard
Strauss conducting and Bahr-Mildenburg as _Klytemnestra_. I shall never
forget her in it, nor the orchestral effects Strauss pr