On the other side of the world people were all talking of Gounod's new opera--the one he had sold for only twelve hundred dollars, but which had made a wonderful hit both in Paris and London. It was said to be startlingly new; and Max Maretzek, in despair over the many lukewarm successes we had all had, decided to have a look at the score. The opera was _Faust_. With all my pride, I was terrified and appalled when "the Magnificent" came to me and abruptly told me that I was to create the part of Marguerite in America. This was a "large order" for a girl of twenty; but I took my courage in both hands and resolved to make America proud of me. I was a pioneer when I undertook Gounod's music and I had no notion of what to do with it, but my will and my ambition arose to meet the situation. Just here, because of its general bearing on the point, I feel that it is desirable to quote a paragraph which was written by my old friend--or was he enemy?--many years later when I had won my measure of success, "Nym Crinkle" (A. C. Wheeler), and which I have always highly valued: There isn't a bit of snobbishness about Kellogg's opinions [he wrote]. For a woman who has sung everywhere, she retains a very wholesome opinion of her own country. She always seems to me to be trying to win two imperishable chaplets, one of which is for her country. So you see we have got to take our little flags and wave them whether it is the correct thing or not. And, so far as I am concerned, I think it is the correct thing.... She has this tremendous advantage that, when she declares in print that America can produce its own singers, she is quite capable of going afterwards upon the stage and proving it! CHAPTER VIII MARGUERITE Mme. Miolan-Carvalho created Marguerite in Paris, at the Théâtre Lyrique. In London Patti and Titjiens had both sung it before we put it on in America,--Adelina at Covent Garden and Titjiens at Her Majesty's Opera House, where I was destined to sing it later. Except for these productions of _Faust_ across the sea, that opera was still an unexplored field. I had absolutely nothing to guide me, nothing to help me, when I began work on it. I, who had been schooled and trained in "traditions" and their observances since I had first begun to study, found myself confronted with conditions that had as yet no traditions. I had to make them for myself.