served at eight-thirty or nine, and is usually laid out on a long table
in the centre of the room. There are cold meats and salads; cold fish
and pickled fish; queer breads; and, of course, you go first for the
wonderful _hors d'oeuvres_ of countless varieties, for this is where
they grow.

A Swede once told me you could always tell a German travelling in
Sweden, because when the _Schwedische Platte_ or _hors d'oeuvres_ were
passed to him, he made a meal of the dainty mayonnaise and savoury
morsels, instead of eating them as an appetizer, as is intended. In the
beautiful station of Copenhagen, decorated in the old Norse style, with
scarlet-painted wooden carved beams, we were served with all we could
eat of these dainties with bread and butter, for about forty cents--and
I wished I were a German!

On the way home, we were storm-bound at Copenhagen, and I at once fell
in love with that city, and its wonderful blond race of big men and
women. We heard stories of divorces and passionate love affairs, that
made other nations pale by contrast. One delightful man told us he had
had no objection to his wife having _one_ lover, but when he found she
had seven, he thought it time to get a divorce! He still quite often saw
her, and said they were the best friends in the world. He liked to take
her out to dinner and the theatre and tell her all about everything. He
called us "The Misses Chickens Howard," and was only restrained by
business engagements from following us from place to place. That was a
hobby of his, he said, when he found a sympathetic artist.

We crossed back to Germany, and I sang with Nickisch for the first time,
in Hamburg. His room behind the stage swarmed with ladies, in the
_entr'acte_, and the concert master told me it was always so. A valet
looked him over carefully before he went on the stage, pulled down his
coat, and patted the Herr Professor's shoulders. I remembered the cuff
story in Metz and watched through the crack of the door to see if it
still held good--and it did!

Later I sang with Mengelberg in Frankfort. He said to me, eating apples
the while: "I engaged you because friends of mine in Holland told me you
could sing. Can you?" After the concert he came to me again, still
eating apples, and said: "_Es is wahr. Sie haben eine Prachtvolle
Stimme, und koennen prachtvoll singen_," and kissed my hand.

To hear Mengelberg direct "Tod und Verklaerung" of Strauss, with his own
orchestra is one of