Piccolomini arrived here a couple of years later and I heard her, too. She was of a distinguished Italian family, and, considering Italy's aristocratic prejudices, it is strange that she should have been an opera singer. She made _Traviata_, in which she had already captured the British public, first known to us: yet she was an indifferent singer and had a very limited _répertoire_. She received her adulation partly because people didn't know much then about music. Adulation it was, too. She made $5000 a month, and America had never before imagined such an operatic salary. She looked a little like Lucca; was small and dark, and decidedly clever in comedy. I was fortunate enough to see her in Pergolese's delightful, if archaic, opera, _La Serva Padrona_--"The Maid as Mistress"--and she proved herself to be an exceptional _comédienne_. She was excellent in tragedy, too. Brignoli was the first great tenor I ever heard; and Amodio the first famous baritone. Brignoli--but all the world knows what Brignoli was! As for Amodio; he had a great and beautiful voice; but, poor man, what a disadvantage he suffered under in his appearance. He was so fat that he was grotesque, he was absurdly short, and had absolutely no saving grace as to physique. He played Mazetto to Piccolomini's Zerlina, and the whole house roared when they came on dancing. I heard nearly all the great singers of my youth; all that were to be heard in New York, at any rate, except Grisi. I missed Grisi, I am sorry to say, because on the one occasion when I was asked to hear her sing, with Mario, I chose to go to a children's party instead. I am much ashamed of this levity, although I was, to be sure, only ten years old at the time. [Illustration: =Clara Louise Kellogg. Aged Seven= Photograph by Black & Case] Adelina Patti I heard the year before my own _début_. She was a slip of a girl then, when she appeared over here in _Lucia_, and carried the town by storm. What a voice! I had never dreamed of anything like it. But, for that matter, neither had anyone else.