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.