The _Heldenbariton_ was of another type. He had been twenty-five years on the stage, and twenty in this theatre. Opera singing for him was like going to his office. He had his house with a charming garden, his family, and a circle of friends and acquaintances, which included nearly the whole population. There are many cases like his in this class of theatre, and a pleasant life they lead. After eight years in the same _Hoftheater_ they are eligible for a pension, a certain proportion of their salary, which increases with their years of service, up to a fixed point. Only certain _Hoftheaters_ have this pension fund; it is very nice for some singers, but a great hardship for others. If you leave that theatre before your eight years are up, you lose all that you have paid during your engagement. Contribution to the pension fund is compulsory for all singers and actors in that theatre. One singer whom I knew had spent sixteen years in different theatres, always paying a pension tax, and never receiving the benefit of one penny from the money, as her engagement in each place came to an end before the stipulated eight years. Unscrupulous directors take advantage of this to fail to renew a singer's contract when it gets near the eighth year. The invaluable _Genossenschaft_ is also trying to remedy this abuse. Some of the regular members of a _Hoftheater_ have enviable concert reputations as well, though in Germany the two professions are quite separate, and concert singing is generally looked upon as the higher branch of art. The critics are suspicious of the opera singer in concert, to such an extent that I was advised, at my first Berlin recital, to keep my real standing in the profession dark and present myself without my title of _Hofopernsängerin_. I suggested to my agent that, as I was quite unknown in Berlin, it might be well to spend a little money in extra advertising. "Advertising?" said he, "they will think you are a soap!" So I sang unheralded except by the usual half-inch in the daily papers. In contrast to the publicity campaigns and press-agents of this country, let me give another instance of how they did things in Germany before the war. On being engaged at this _Hoftheater_, I thought I ought to let the public know it. I wrote my agent, Herr Harder, asking him to spend 1000 marks ($250) for me in judicious advertising of my engagement. He answered that there was no way in which he could place the money to further my interests, and returned it! The first contract which was offered me for a concert tour in America, provided for $2,000 to be paid down for advertising before the tour began. CHAPTER XVI THE ART OF MARIE MUELLE