th, and I proudly have the stubs to this day. She made us all laugh
in rehearsal. When she says in the last act that they will find only a
skeleton when they come to drag her from her prison, she passed her
hands over her ample contours and emitted a spontaneous chuckle that was
irresistibly infectious. Bahr Mildenburg came to us also and revealed to
me what _Ortrud_ might be. Especially in the first act is she
overwhelming. In playing the part later I always felt her influence, and
many things I do in that act were inspired by thoughts she gave me.
Watch most _Ortruds_ in that scene. They simply stand in what they
consider mantled inscrutability, trying to portray evil in a heavy,
unsubtle manner; and then see Bahr Mildenburg, if you can. All the
really great people I have ever met are unpretentious and absolutely
charming to work with. Only the near-great seem to consider it necessary
to remind you all the time that they are other than you. The greater the
man the simpler his manner, I have always found, and I think many will
agree with me.

There was an excellent store of men's costumes to call on; beautiful
embroidered coats and waistcoats from the eighteenth century, real
uniforms of many regiments of bygone days, and the best Wagnerian
barbaric stuff I have ever seen, with the exception of van Rooy's.

One of the principal men singers was a tall dark fellow, with a most
passionate disposition. We played together often and he fell very much
in love with me. One day when we were all together at a wood coffee
house, his wife asked him how he had broken his watch which she found
smashed on the floor one morning. He said he had dropped it while
reading the night before, but he told me he had been sitting thinking of
me long after his wife had retired, and suddenly saw his watch shattered
in a thousand pieces on the floor across the room, where he had hurled
it. He was devoted to his little son, a charming sunny little chap, with
the dark colouring of his mother.

When I think of these good comrades of mine I cannot but wonder what the
war has done to them. The Hun element seemed to be in very few of them,
but I can remember it in one. This impossible person, frightfully
conceited, lacking absolutely in humour, annoyed and goaded me through
two long years with his boorish manners, low ideas of American life,
loudly expressed, and crass ignorance of all ideals of living. I came to
rehearsal one day and found the collea