367 INDEX............................................. 369 ILLUSTRATIONS Walter Damrosch in 1920 Afternoon coffee in the Damrosch Home, Breslau, 1867 Doctor Leopold Damrosch and his son Walter at eighteen years of age Lilli Lehmann as Isolde Mathilde Marchesi Nellie Melba Camille Saint-Saëns and Walter Damrosch Lieutenant Walker Blaine Beale Fritz Kreisler, Harold Bauer, Pablo Casals, and Walter Damrosch My Musical Life I CHILDHOOD—1866-1875 I am an American musician and have lived in this country since my ninth year. I was born in Breslau, Silesia, on January 30, 1862, and my first memories are connected with war, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. I was four years old and remember being with my mother in a room in our apartment in Breslau, which was filled with flowers and growing plants (mother always had a marvellous gift for maintaining and nursing plants) and various friends coming in to condole with her over the death of my baby brother, Hans, who had died of cholera, which was then raging in Breslau. The second child of my parents, born in 1860, had been christened Richard, after Richard Wagner, who had officiated as godfather at the ceremony. This child lived but a short time, and Wagner had vowed that he would never again stand as godfather for the children of any of his friends, as the ill luck which had pursued him all his life was thus carried even into their families. In order to safeguard the rest of her children from the danger of the dread disease to which little Hans had succumbed, my mother took my older brother, Frank, myself, and a baby sister into the country near the Bohemian frontier, where the war was being fought. I can remember my brother and myself standing at a country road, each armed with a huge bouquet of flowers we had gathered, and watching for General Steinmetz and his army to pass on their way to the front. As they marched by, my brother bravely ran to one of the officers and gave him his flowers, but my courage gave out and I threw my bouquet so that it fell on the ground, from which one of the soldiers smilingly picked it up and stuck it on his bayonet. That same afternoon Frank and I lay on the ground with our ears closely pressed to it and we could plainly hear the booming of the cannon. When peace was declared, King William of Prussia (afterward Emperor William the First) together with Crown Prince Frederick, Bismarck, Moltke, and a brilliant retinue of officers, made their triumphant entry into Breslau on horseback. My brother and I watched this gorgeous sight with delighted eyes from the balcony of our apartment. My mother threw a wreath, which fell on the neck of the horse carrying King William and he, looking up, saluted her. * * * * *