ere two
comedians of the first rank. As a singing soubrette, daring,
versatile, and popular, Miss Harrison had no superiors in her day. The
entire company was saturated with the spirit and "go" of Gilbert, and
fairly tingled with the joyous music of Sullivan. The fact that the
production was of a pirated version, untrammelled by the oversight of
D'Oyley Carte, added zest to the performance and enlisted Field's
partisan sympathy and co-operation from the start. He enjoyed each
night's performance with all the relish of a boy eating the apples of
pleasure from a forbidden orchard. When the season came to an end, as
all good things must, Field, Ballantyne, and I went to Milwaukee to
see that our friends had a fair start there. We got back to Chicago on
the early morning milk train, and in "Sharps and Flats" the next day
Field recorded the definitive judgment that "Miss Alice Harrison, in
her performance of Yum-Yum in Gilbert and Sullivan's new opera of 'The
Mikado,' has set the standard of that interesting role, and it is a
high one. In fact, we doubt whether it will ever be approached by any
other artist on the American stage."

It never has been approached, nor has the opera, so far as my
information goes, ever been given with the same Gilbertian verve and
swing. The subsequent performance of "The Mikado" by the authorized
company, seen throughout the United States, seemed by comparison "like
water after wine."

On the operatic stage Madame Sembrich was by all odds Field's favorite
prima donna. He was one of the earliest writers on the press to
recognize the wonderful beauty of the singer's voice and the
perfection of her method. He easily distinguished between her trained
faculty and the bird-like notes of Patti, but the personality of the
former won him, where he remained unmoved when Patti's wonderful voice
rippled through the most difficult, florid music like crystal running
water over the smooth stones of a mountain brook. Field's admiration
for Sembrich often found expression in more conventional phrases, but
never in a form that better illustrated how she attracted him than in
the following amusing comment on her appearance in Chicago, January
24th, 1884, in Lucia:

It is not at all surprising that Madame Sembrich caught on so grandly
night before last. She is the most comfortable-looking prima donna
that has ever visited Chicago. She is one of your square-built,
stout-rigged little ladies with a brigh