ands like
those perform? They are beautiful certainly, but useless, absolutely
useless, just as she herself is useless. There is not one thing by which
she can earn her daily bread, and earn it she must or starve. To what a
pass has she come; she, who at one time had wealth at her command and
the world at her feet.

As she sits there, broken in spirit, broken in health, a middle-aged
woman in appearance, while in years not much beyond her first youth,
she recalls those triumphs of her past. Her success had been marvelous
though short-lived. Her mind wanders back to the days when she was the
pet and idol of musical Europe. The mere announcement that she was to
sing would pack the largest opera house to the very doors. Ah! those
days of triumph, when she had passed from one success to another, when
the mighty ones of the earth were pleased to do her honor, when the
incense of praise and flattery was burned day and night upon the shrine
of her greatness. Her mother was with her then, the beautiful, fairylike
little mother for whom her love had been almost worship. Her voice had
been with her, too, that voice at which two continents had marveled.
Both are gone now, the beautiful mother, the wonderful voice; gone, gone
forever, and she is alone in the world, alone and poor and friendless.

She recalls the first and only time when she appeared in public in
America, her native land. She did not want to sing that night, for her
mother, who had been slightly ailing for some time, seemed very much
worse. She had decided not to appear at all, but had finally yielded to
the mother's entreaties and driven to the opera house. What an ovation
she had received that night! She could see it all again: the lights, the
flowers, the music, the vast audience simply frantic with delight at her
performance. At the close she had been recalled again and again, and
those enthusiastic plaudits still rang in her ears. How little she had
dreamed as she smiled and bowed her thanks, and how little those who
watched her had dreamed that never again was that wonderful voice to be
heard by mortal ears, that voice which had stirred millions of hearts
and made its owner one of the foremost singers of her day.

She had driven home from that scene of triumph to find that her mother's
condition had become alarmingly worse in the few hours of her absence,
and before morning she had stood beside a deathbed the recollection of
which makes her shudder even now.