I am laughed at for this." His dog Peps died in his arms, and he wrote
Praeger: "I cried incessantly, and since then have felt bitter pain and
sorrow for the dear friend of the past thirteen years, who has walked
and worked with me." One of Wagner's last plans was to write a book to
be called "A History of My Dogs." Anecdotes galore there are of his
humanity to dogs and cats and other members of our larger family.

Wagner had also a famous passion for gorgeous colours; his music shows
this. He liked fine stuffs peculiarly, and even in his pauperdom wore
silk next to his skin. When fortune found him, he made a veritable
rainbow of himself with his dressing-gowns, and even with many-coloured
trousers. His stomach was not so fond of luxury, and he was not
addicted to wine or beer, and for long periods drank neither at all. He
injured his health by eating too fast, though this was not, as in
Händel's case, from gluttony, but from absent-minded interest in his
work. Yet there is something strangely human and captivating in the
story that, when he was eight years old, he traded off a volume of
Schiller's poems for a cream puff.

Wagner's career shows a curious growth away from his early ideas. He
was at first an artistic disciple of Meyerbeer, and not only drew
operatic inspirations from him, but was saved from starving by
Meyerbeer's money and by his letters of introduction; later he came to
abhor Meyerbeer's operas, and to despise the man himself and his ways.
Wagner earned himself numberless powerful enemies by his fierce hatred
for the Jewish race, and by his ferocious attack in an article called
"Judaism in Music." Yet his first flirtation was with a Jewess, and it
was not his fault that he did not marry her. She lived in Leipzig, and
was a friend of his sister. She had the highly racial name of Leah
David, and was a personification of Jewish beauty, with her eyes and