e _Sunday Transcript_ unkindly
remarked that "he had better come home and look after his own Dutch
windmill at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut Streets."

I had at this time a great deal to do with the operas and theatres, and
often wrote the reviews. After a while, as Captain Nevin relieved me of
a great deal of work, and I had an able assistant named Norcross, I
devoted myself chiefly to dramatic criticism and the weekly, and such
work as suited me best. As for the dignity of managership, Captain Nevin
and I tossed it from one to the other like a hot potato in jest, but
between us we ran the paper very well. There was an opera impresario
named Maurice Strakosch, of whom I had heard that he was hard to deal
with and irritable. I forget now who the prima donna in his charge was,
but there had appeared in our paper a criticism which might be
interpreted in some detail unfavourably by a captious critic. One
afternoon there came into the office, where I was alone, a gentlemanly-
seeming man, who began to manifest anger in regard to the criticism in
question. I replied, "I do not know, sir, what your position in the
opera troupe may be, but if it be anything which requires a knowledge of
English, I am afraid that you are misplaced. There was no intention to
offend in the remarks, and so far as the lady is concerned I shall only
be too glad to say the very best I can of her. _Comprenez_, _monsieur_,
_c'est une bagatelle_." He laughed, and we spoke French, then Italian,
then German, and of Patti and Sontag and Lind. Then I asked him what he
really was, and he replied, "I do not believe that you even know the name
of my native tongue. It is Czech." I stared at him amazed, and said--

"Veliky Bog! Rozprava pochesky? Nekrasneya rejece est."

The Bohemian gentleman drew a handsomely bound book from his pocket.
"Sir," he said, "this is my album. It is full of signatures of great
artists, even of kings and queens and poets. There is not a name in it
which is not that of a distinguished person, and I do not know what your
name is, but I beg that you will write it in my book."

Nearly the same scene was repeated soon after, with the same words, when
the great actress Fanny Janauschek came to Philadelphia. At that time
she played only in German. Her manager, Grau, introduced me to her, and
she complimented me on my German, and praised the language as the finest
in the world.

"Yes," I replied, "it _is_ certainl