While he was in New York a ball in honour of the Prince was given at
the Opera House by the "Committee of Welcome." This inspired a second
laureate, Edmund Clarence Stedman:

But as ALBERT EDWARD, young and fair,
Stood on the canopied dais-chair,
And looked from the circle crowding there
To the length and breadth of the outer scene,
Perhaps he thought of his mother, the QUEEN:
(Long may her empery be serene!
Long may the Heir of England prove
Loyal and tender; may he pay
No less allegiance to her love
Than to the sceptre of her sway!)

The visit of the Prince of Wales was not the only attraction
challenging the popularity of Lola Montez at this period. There was
another rival, and one in more direct competition with herself. This
was Sam Cowell, a music-hall "star" from England. A comedian of
genuine talent, he took America by storm with a couple of ballads,
"The Rat-Catcher's Daughter" and "Villikins and his Dinah." The public
flocked to hear him in their thousands. Lola's lectures fell very
flat. Even fresh material and reduced prices failed to serve as a
lure. The position was becoming serious.

But, while her manager looked glum when he examined the box-office
figures, Lola was not upset, for she had suddenly developed another
activity, and one to which she was giving all her attention. This was
the occult. The "Voices" at whose bidding she had abandoned the stage
a couple of years earlier were now insistent that she should drop the
platform; and, casting in her lot with the "Spirits," get into touch
with a mysterious region vaguely referred to as "the Beyond."

It was a time when spiritualism was flourishing like a green bay tree.
Mrs. Hayden ("the wife of a respectable journalist") and the Fox
Sisters had been playing their pranks for years and collecting dollars
from dupes all over the country; and their rivals, the Davenport
Brothers, with Daniel Dunglas Home (Browning's "Sludge, the Medium")
were humbugging Harvard professors, financial magnates, and Supreme
Court judges; and, not to be behindhand, other experts were (for a
cash consideration) calling up Columbus and Shakespeare and Napoleon,
who talked to them at seances as readily as if they were at the end of
a telephone, but with pronounced American accents.

[Illustration: _Countess of Landsfeld. A favourite portrait_

(_Harvard Theatre Collection_)]

Lola's first reaction was a