As Gilda I was laying only the groundwork. My performance was, I believe, on the right lines. It rang true. But it was far from what it became in later years when the English critics found me "the most beautiful and convincing of all Gildas!" As Linda I do not think that I showed any great intellectual improvement over Gilda, but I had acquired a certain confidence and authority. I sang and acted with more ease; and for the first time I had gained a sense of _personal responsibility_ toward, and for, an audience. When I beheld only three hundred people in my first-night Boston audience and determined to win them, and did win them, I came into possession of new and important factors in my work. This consciousness and earnest will-power to move one's public by the force of one's art is one of the first steps toward being a true _prima donna_. _I Puritani_ never taught me very much, simply as an opera. The part was too heavy as my voice was then, and our production of it was so hurried that I had not time to spend on it the study which I liked to give a new _rôle_. But in this very fact lay its lesson for me. The necessity for losing timidity and self-consciousness, the power to fling oneself into a new part without time to coddle one's vanity or one's habits of mind, the impersonal courage needed to attack fresh difficulties:--these points are of quite as much importance to a young opera singer as are fine breath control and a gift for phrasing. _Sonnambula_, too, had to be "jumped into" in the same fashion and was even more of an undertaking, though the _rôle_ suited me better and is, in fact, a rarely grateful one. Yet think of being Amina with only one week's rehearsing! _Sonnambula_ was first given by us as a benefit performance for Brignoli. It was generally understood to be in the nature of a farewell. Indeed, I think he said so himself. But, of course, he never had the slightest idea of really leaving America. He stayed here until he died. But to his credit be it said that he never had any more "farewell" appearances. He did not form the habit.