At Queenstown, where we touched before going on to our regular port of Liverpool, a man came on board asking for Miss Clara Louise Kellogg. He was from Jarrett, the agent for Colonel Mapleson who was then _impresario_ of "Her Majesty's Opera" in London, and he brought me word that Mapleson wanted me to call on him as soon as I reached London and, until we could definitely arrange matters, to please give him the refusal of myself, if I may so express it. Perhaps I wasn't a proud and happy girl! Mapleson, I heard later, was then believed to be on the verge of failure and it was hoped that my appearance in his company would revive his fortunes. I grew afterwards cordially to detest and to distrust him, and we had more troubles than I can or care to keep track of: and, as for Jarrett, he was a most unpleasant creature with a positive genius for making trouble. But on that day in Queenstown harbour, with the sun shining and the little Irish fisher boats--their patched sails streaming into the blue off-shore distance,--the man Jarrett had sent to meet me on behalf of Colonel Mapleson seemed like a herald of great good cheer. When we reached London we went to Miss Edward's Hotel in Hanover Square. It was a curious institution, distinctive of its day and generation, a real old-fashioned English hotel, behind streets that were "chained-up" after nightfall. It was called a "private hotel" and unquestionably was one; deadly dull, but maintained in the most aristocratic way imaginable, like a formal, pluperfect, private house where one might chance to be invited to visit. Everyone dined in his own sitting-room, which was usually separated from the bedroom, and never a soul but the servants was seen. The Langham was the first London hotel to introduce the American style of hotel and it, with its successors, have had such an influence upon the other hostelries of London as gradually to undermine the quaint, old, truly English places we used to know, until there are no more "private hotels" like Miss Edward's in existence.