plate, and our
table always looked as if a horde of locusts had visited it.

Those colleagues of my first engagement are stamped upon my
memory--representing as they did so much that was new to me,--a new
nationality, a new profession, and in many cases a new social class.
Take them all together they were a pretty decent lot considering their
antecedents and surroundings. As a general rule, I think the actors are
apt to be of a somewhat higher social class than the singers, as a
remarkable voice occurs when and where it will, while a vocation for the
acting stage presupposes a certain amount of education and refinement of
surroundings, although there have been, of course, some notable
exceptions.

They wanted us to meet the officers of the different smart regiments.
The Red Dragoons in particular were supposed to be all-powerful in
deciding the success or failure of a singer, and the colleagues kindly
thought we ought all to have the advantage of this. One or two of the
women of course had affairs with them, and as Marjorie and I did not
care to meet the officers in just that society, we were sometimes hard
put to it to find a good excuse. Once my sister went to bed, though
perfectly well, for several days, to avoid a particularly pressing
invitation. Later we met these officers through letters from our
relatives, and liked some of them tremendously. Even their affairs were
the outcome of the system, and did no particular harm to any one.

The opera soubrette had one of years' standing with a tall ungainly
White Dragoon. He was a harmless idiot, and she a smart German-Polish
Jewess, a nice little thing. We each had a "Benefiz" before leaving the
Metz engagement, when we were showered with flowers and gifts from our
friends and admirers, also sharing in the box-office receipts. R----,
the soubrette, told us the day after hers, still breathless from rage,
that "_Er_"--she never called him anything but "He"--had sent her an
umbrella, bound in the middle of a huge sheaf of roses. He had not
passed it over the footlights, so that every one might see its
splendour, but had left it at her rooms. When he called on her expecting
soft thanks, she berated him soundly, and succeeded in so enraging his
usually placid self that he threw his big sabre through the window,
sending it crashing into the court below.

One handsome Red Dragoon, a notorious connoisseur of music and women,
and believed absolutely irresistible, always sat