rder that he might then come to enjoy
it?" But I reserved that remark.

This lady was full of the praises of the head-tenor who had performed in
a Wagner opera the night before, and went on to enlarge upon his old and
prodigious fame, and how many honors had been lavished upon him by the
princely houses of Germany. Here was another surprise. I had attended
that very opera, in the person of my agent, and had made close and
accurate observations. So I said:

"Why, madam, MY experience warrants me in stating that that tenor's
voice is not a voice at all, but only a shriek--the shriek of a hyena."

"That is very true," she said; "he cannot sing now; it is already many
years that he has lost his voice, but in other times he sang, yes,
divinely! So whenever he comes now, you shall see, yes, that the theater
will not hold the people. JAWOHL BEI GOTT! his voice is WUNDERSCHOEN in
that past time."

I said she was discovering to me a kindly trait in the Germans which
was worth emulating. I said that over the water we were not quite so
generous; that with us, when a singer had lost his voice and a jumper
had lost his legs, these parties ceased to draw. I said I had been to
the opera in Hanover, once, and in Mannheim once, and in Munich
(through my authorized agent) once, and this large experience had nearly
persuaded me that the Germans PREFERRED singers who couldn't sing. This
was not such a very extravagant speech, either, for that burly Mannheim
tenor's praises had been the talk of all Heidelberg for a week before
his performance took place--yet his voice was like the distressing noise
which a nail makes when you screech it across a window-pane. I said so
to Heidelberg friends the next day, and they said, in the calmest and
simplest way, that that was very true, but that in earlier times his
voice HAD been wonderfully fine. And the tenor in Hanover was just
another example of this sort. The English-speaking German gentleman who
went with me to the opera there was brimming with enthusiasm over that
tenor. He said:

"ACH GOTT! a great man! You shall see him. He is so celebrate in all
Germany--and he has a pension, yes, from the government. He not obliged
to sing now, only twice every year; but if he not sing twice each year
they take him his pension away."

Very well, we went. When the renowned old tenor appeared, I got a nudge
and an excited whisper:

"Now you see him!"

But the "celebrate" was an astonishing disap