It is difficult, when repeating thus in print such snatches of autobiography, to suggest the modest tone and manner of the person whose words may be recorded. It is particularly difficult in the case of Madame Patti, who is as absolutely unspoiled as the freshest _ingénue_. Autobiography such as hers must read a little fanciful to most folk; it is so far removed from the common experiences of us all, and even from the extraordinary experiences of the renowned persons we usually hear about. But there is not a patch of vanity in Patti’s sunny nature. Her life has been a long, unbroken record of success--success of a degree attained by no other woman; no one else has won and held such homage; no one else has been so wondrously endowed with beauty and genius and sweet simplicity of nature--a nature unspoiled by flattery, by applause, by wealth, by the possession and exercise of power. Patti at fifty is like a girl in her ways, in her thoughts, in her spirit, in her disinterestedness, in her enjoyments. Time has dimmed none of her charms, it has lessened none of her superb gifts. She said to me one day: “They tell me I am getting to be an old woman, but I don’t believe it. I don’t feel old. I feel young. I am the youngest person of my acquaintance.” That is true enough, as they know who see Patti from day to day. She has all the enthusiasms and none of the affectations of a young girl. When she speaks of herself it is with the most delicious frankness and lack of self-consciousness. She is perfectly natural. [Illustration] [Illustration: MADAME PATTI IN 1869 AND IN 1877.] She promised to show me the programme of that Philadelphia performance before the Prince of Wales so long ago, and the next day she put it before me. It is a satin programme with gilt fringe, and its announcement is surmounted by the Prince of Wales’s feathers. At that Philadelphia performance Adelina Patti made her first appearance before royalty. In the next year she made her London début. It was at Covent Garden, as Amina in “La Sonnambula.” The next morning Europe rang with the fame of the new prima donna from America. “I tried to show them that the young lady from America was entitled to a hearing,” said she, as we looked over the old programmes. [Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM.] “And has the ‘young lady from America’ retained that spirit of national pride, or has she become so much a citizen of the world that no corner of it has any greater claim than another upon her affections?” “I love the Italian language, the American people, the English country, and my Welsh home.” “A choice yet catholic selection. The national preferences, if you can be said to own any, have reason on their side. Your parents were Italian, you were born in Spain, you grew from girlhood to womanhood in America, you first won international fame in England, and among these Welsh hills you have planted a paradise.”