ay out
of it.

I being always hopeful, it was for me to raise the drooping spirits
and advise means of action. I left for San Francisco with the younger
boy and Mr. Blake remained with the elder to straighten out his
affairs as well as possible. I took my sewing machine with me and
intended to retrieve the family fortune with my voice and my needle. I
came to the home of Mrs. John Clough, a friend, on Third street,
between Market and Mission. Her husband was a fine tenor singer and I
knew she would help me get something to do. I was there but a few
weeks when the Lyster Opera Troupe came from Australia and began
singing at the old Metropolitan theater on Montgomery street. I was
one of the 300 members of the Handel and Haydn Society, which was
called upon by Mr. F. Lyster for voices for the chorus. A leading
contralto and a soprano were in the troupe. Mrs. Cameron and I were
chosen after the voices were tried and accepted. I had no trouble as I
had studied the choruses of most of the familiar operas. I also knew
many of the contralto arias, like Perlate de Amour in Faust and other
contralto numbers of the different operas that we gave. I was engaged
at $20 per week, which seemed to me a fabulous sum, for I was without
any means. These were strenuous days, sometimes fourteen hours in the
theatre a day, singing one opera and practicing a new one. I was not
unhappy as I was doing something to help along the good work of
regaining our footing and I worked willingly, but the operas of Norma,
Les Huguenots, Faust, Aida were heavy and required long rehearsals,
the theater was damp and cold and sometimes I wished myself out of it.
After singing in ten heavy operas I caught cold and was obliged to
stop, much to the disappointment of Mr. Lyster, as he had hoped to
take me with the troupe. But I was too ill and besides my sons were
too small to leave them behind, so I canceled my engagement and closed
my career in opera.

Before I recovered, Mr. Blake had settled as best he could and left me
to go to Reno, where his stocks were, to see if anything could be
saved at all. When he returned after three months' absence I had
taken the upper part of the house at the corner of O'Farrell and
Stockton streets, and with what furniture I still possessed I started
to rent rooms. I had also gotten the choir position as alto in St.
Patrick's church on Market street, on the lot where the Palace Hotel
now stands. While employed there a church