hat night. Your word for it alone won't do. Every theatre has
special doctors on its list, and you must call in one of these, whether
he is your regular physician or not. He makes an examination and gives
you a signed statement that you are unable to appear, adding, if the
disorder be serious, how many days it will be in his opinion, before you
can return to work. It often happens that the man most experienced in
treating your illness, the best throat specialist in town, for example,
is not on the books as "Theater-Arzt," and then if you wish to be
treated by him, you sometimes have trouble with the theatre doctor. In
the theatre in which I was first engaged, I had a disagreeable
experience of this kind. I was ill with bronchitis, and sent word to the
theatre the day before, that I should not be able to sing _Marta_, in
"Faust," on the night scheduled for it. I had already committed the
deadly crime of illness once before that season, and this time my
defection was particularly annoying to the management because they had
to get a guest for "Faust" anyway, and they would be forced to send
posthaste for another to sing the _Nurse_. Their irritation with me was
equalled, if not surpassed, by that of the regular theatre doctor, whose
professional honour had been outraged the last time by my insistence
upon the services of a very clever throat specialist who lived in the
town, and whose aid I had had the bad taste to prefer to his own.
Between them, I was the corn between the upper and nether millstone.
Next day the theatre sent word that they would accept nothing but a
certificate from their own doctor, and the doctor shortly after appeared
at my bedside. I could hardly speak out loud, but managed to whisper a
request that he would write me an "_Attest_" for three days. To my
surprise he began to hem and haw, and finally stammered out: "There is
really no reason in my opinion, why you shouldn't sing this evening!" I
was so furious I saw red. I sat up in bed, and whispered savagely:

"You say I can sing tonight! Very well, get out of my room, and I'll go
to the theatre and sing this evening, with my voice in this condition,
and _you_ will be responsible for the consequences!" He got up, twisting
his hat in his hands, and stammering something. I simply fixed my eyes
on him, and fairly glared him out of the room. Then I dressed like a
hurricane and rushed to the director's office.

"I have come to sing _Marta_," I announced ho