On the reorganised version of this trip we went down into Texas, giving concerts in Waco, Dallas, Cheyenne, San Antonio, and Galveston, among other places. This was before the wonderful railroad had been built that runs for miles through the water; and before the tidal wave that wiped the old Galveston out of existence. At Cheyenne, I remember, we had to ford a river to keep our engagement. At Waco a negro was found under the bed of one of the company; a bridge was burning; and a _posse_ of men, with bloodhounds, was starting out to track the incendiaries. I remember speaking there with a negro woman who had a white child in her charge. The child was busily chewing gum and the woman told me that often the child would put her hand on her jaw saying, "Oh, I'm _so_ tired!" But she could not be induced to stop chewing! At Dallas we sang in a hall that had a tin roof, and, during the concert, a terrific thunderstorm came on, so that I had to stop singing. This is the only time, I believe, that the elements ever succeeded in drowning me out. I never before had seen adobe houses, and I found San Antonio very interesting, and drove as far as I could along the road of the old Spanish Missions that maintain the traditions and aspects of the Spanish in the New World. The Southern theatres are the dirtiest places that can be imagined; and I recall eating opossum that was served to us with great pride by my waiter. From this time on I did not contemplate any long engagements. I did not care for them, although I sometimes went to places to sing--and to collect pewter! I never formally retired from public life, but quietly stopped when it seemed to me the time had come. It was a Kansas City newspaper reporter who incidentally brought home to me the fact that I was no longer very young. I had a few grey hairs, and, after an interview granted to this representative of the press--a woman, by the way--I found, on reading the interview in print the next day, that my grey hairs had been mentioned. "They'll find that my voice is getting grey next," I said to myself. I really wanted to stop before everybody would be saying, "You ought to have heard her sing ten years ago!" [Illustration: =Carl Strakosch= From a photograph by H. W. Barnett] The last time I saw Patti I said to her: "Adelina, have you got through singing?" "Oh, I still sing for _mes pauvres_ in London," she replied; but she didn't explain who were her poor. On my last western concert tour I sang at Oshkosh. A special train of three cars on the Central brought down a large delegation for the occasion from Fond du Lac, Ripon, Neenah and Menasha, Appleton and other neighbouring towns. The audience was in the best of humour and a particularly sympathetic one. At the close of the concert I remarked that it was one of the finest audiences I ever sang to. And I added, by way of pleasantry, that, having sung at Oshkosh, I was now indeed ready to leave the stage!