For our geese we had grey Pomeranian beauties and immense white birds from Italy. The Italians, besides being bigger were more numerous; they saw their opportunity to bully the Teutons within an inch of their lives, and they took it. There was a tank of real water on the stage, in which they loved to splash, but do you suppose a German goose was ever allowed to go near it? Ominous hisses kept them away, and they hated hissing as all actors do. The foreigners gobbled up all the food, before the others could get it, and the only time that there was any unanimity among them was when they were doing something they should not. One night the largest Italian stepped into a depression near the footlights, caught his foot, squawked loudly and passed on. The second largest immediately followed suit; there were eleven of them, and they all in turn caught a foot, squawked and waddled on, to the great delight of the audience. It was agonizing for us on the stage, waiting for each squawk. Animals were always a trial to the performers, though considered to lend a sure magnificence from the manager's point of view. We used to have a pack of hounds in the first act finale of "Tannhäuser." They always behaved beautifully and were allowed to run without leashes. One night, however, our little round _Souffleuse_, as the prompter is called, named "Bobberle" by the tenor as she was as broad as she was long, had taken her bread and sausages into her tiny pen. The dogs suddenly winded this, made a dive for the _Souffler Kasten_ (prompter's box), scratched out the package, devoured the contents and then politely left their cards on the box; poor Bobberle in helpless rage prompting the while. Since that night the dogs have been chained two and two.