er. Wagner got acquainted with
her across the footlights. She was young, comely and all that--they
became engaged. Shortly afterwards, one fine moonlight night, in
response to her merry challenge, they rang up the "Dom" and were
married. They got better acquainted afterward.

* * * * *

It is a fact that Wagner's imprudent marriage at the age of twenty-three
has been much regretted and oft lamented. "What," say the Impressionable
Ones, "Oh, what could he not have accomplished with a proper mate!"

It is very true that Minna Planer had no comprehension of the genius of
her husband; that her two feet were always flatly planted on earth, and
her head never reached the clouds; and true it is that she was a weary
weight to him for the twenty-five years they lived together. Still men
grow strong by carrying burdens; and we must remember that Wagner was
what he was on account of what he endured and suffered.

Wagner expressed himself in his art, and all great art is simply the
honest, spontaneous, individual expression of soul-emotion. Had Wagner's
emotions been different he would have produced a totally different sort
of art. That is to say, if Wagner in his youth had loved and wedded a
woman who was capable of giving his soul peace, we would have had no
Wagner; we would have had some one else, and therefore a totally
different expression, or no expression at all. Probably the man would
have been quite content to be a village Kapellmeister. His life being
reasonably complete, his spirit would not have roamed the Universe
crying for rest. The ideals of his wife were so low and commonplace that
she influenced his career by antithesis. His soul was ahungered for the
bread of life, and stones were given him in way of the dull, the ugly,
the affected, the smug, the ridiculous. Wagner's life was a revolt from
the ossified commonplace, a struggle for right adjustment--a heart
tragedy. And all this reaching out of the spirit, all the prayers,
hopes, fears and travail of his soul, are told and told again in his
poetry and in his music.

All art is autobiography.

Minna Planer was amiable and kind, but the frantic effort she made at
times, in public, to be profound or chic must have touched the great man
on the raw. He sought, however, to protect her, and at public gatherings
used to keep very near to her in order that she should not fall into the
clutches of some sharp-witted enemy and be lead on i