glides by the level marge of smooth banks; now sighing through the stir
of the reeds; now babbling with a fretful joy as some sudden curve on the
shore stays its flight among gleaming pebbles,--so to the soul of the
artist is the voice of the art ever fleeting beside and before him.
Nature gave thee the bird's gift of song: raise the gift into art, and
make the art thy companion.

"Art and Hope were twin-born, and they die together." See how faithfully
I remember, methinks, your very words. But the magic of the words, which
I then but dimly understood, was in your smile and in your eye, and the
queen-like wave of your hand as if beckoning to a world which lay before
you, visible and familiar as your native land. And how devotedly, with
what earnestness of passion, I gave myself up to the task of raising my
gift into an art! I thought of nothing else, dreamed of nothing else;
and oh, now sweet to me then were words of praise! "Another year yet,"
at length said the masters, "and you ascend your throne among the queens
of song." Then--then--I would have changed for no other throne on earth
my hope of that to be achieved in the realms of my art. And then came
that long fever: my strength broke down, and the Maestro said, "Rest, or
your voice is gone, and your throne is lost forever." How hateful that
rest seemed to me! You again came to my aid. You said, "The time you
think lost should be but time improved. Penetrate your mind with other
songs than the trash of Libretti. The more you habituate yourself to the
forms, the more you imbue yourself with the spirit, in which passions
have been expressed and character delineated by great writers, the more
completely you will accomplish yourself in your own special art of singer
and actress." So, then, you allured me to a new study. Ah! in so doing
did you dream that you diverted me from the old ambition? My knowledge
of French and Italian, and my rearing in childhood, which had made
English familiar to me, gave me the keys to the treasure-houses of three