As material for study we ordered a whole little music library: Garcia’s “Method” in two large volumes; the scores of all the operas that were to form my future repertory—all with Italian text. That was by no means a monotonous life. On the contrary, it was full of the tragic, of passion, of ebullient joy, of the tenderest devotion, of the most heroic uplift, of funereal horror, of epithalamial bliss; in short, of all the feelings and fates which belonged to the heroines of my operas. Norma, Amina, La Traviata, Lucia, Linda, I myself was—one after the other, as I sat at the piano and memorized the text and melody in which were expressed all the sadness and the joy, the sweetness and the horror, which I tried with all my might to realize so that I might one day carry it triumphantly into the souls of my listeners. And the Edgardos and Manricos, Gennaros and Alfredos, who were destined to accompany my soprano in harmonious trios and sextets,—these also I saw before me; I simply _loved_ them. Do not take it that I was imagining the singers,—they were to remain a matter of indifference to me,—but the forms created by the dramatist and composer, and all their heroism, all their poetry. In just the same manner the young girl reading her Schiller becomes enraptured by the Don Carloses and Posas, the Ferdinands and Karl Moors,—only in the study of the operas there is added the ineffable something that wells forth from the magic tones of the music. Music says things which are not contained in any language. What can now and then stream forth from a sequence of tones, from a chord, from a rhythmical crescendo, is as little to be repeated in words as is the fragrance of flowers, the taste of a fruit. There are melodies which tell a story, arpeggios which caress, chords which burn; in many measures one feels as if—now I am endeavoring, after all, to find words for that of which I have just said that it lies outside of language; it is in vain. But a hundred times more powerful yet is the enjoyment of the charm of music when one is filled with it not only as a recipient but also as a giver, as a creator; when one is himself the transmitter of this mysterious and ineffable something to the souls of others; when one feels that thousands of auditors are seized by the same waves of passion, of rapture, of exultation, or of pain.