At the close of the third act of “Walküre,” when Materna as _Brunhilde_ had snuggled into the artificially deep hollow of the rocky couch which sustained her bulky form and on which she was to begin her slumber of years until the hero, _Siegfried_, should awaken her, and when Staudigl (_Wotan_) had disappeared in the flames, I suddenly noticed, while conducting the beautiful monotony of the last E-major chords of the Fire Charm, that the grass mats just below _Brunhilde’s_ couch had caught fire, and that just as the curtain was descending slowly on the last bars a Boston fireman with helmet on his head and bucket in his hand quietly came out from the wings and poured a liberal dose of water on the flames. The thing happened so late and so quickly that there was no panic. The people went mad with enthusiasm and Materna, Staudigl, and I had to bow our farewells many, many times. Just after one of these recalls I noted the little fireman standing in the wings and saying: “Be jabbers, I ought to come out too.” “So you should,” I said, and with that took him by one hand and Materna by the other and thus we dragged him before the footlights where, with true Hibernian sense of humor, he bowed right and left with a delighted grin on his face. Thus ended my first opera tour. While I was on tour the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House met to consider their future policy, and, in view of the success of the opera in German inaugurated by my father, they decided to continue on the same lines. Curiously enough they appointed a young man as director of the opera who had never had any managerial or musical experience in his life. His name was Edmund C. Stanton. He was a relative of one of the directors and had acted as recording secretary for the Board of Directors. He was tall, good-looking, with gentle brown eyes, always well groomed, of a kindly disposition and the most perfect and courtly manners which indeed never failed him and which were about all that he had left at the end of his seven years’ incumbency, at which time the German opera crumbled to dust as a natural result of his curious ignorance and incompetency in matters operatic. The directors at the same time very generously appointed me as his assistant and as second conductor, granting me a salary which was large enough to enable me to support my mother and my father’s family decently. This was naturally a great relief to me and I determined to strain every nerve to show myself worthy of such confidence and generosity. VII LILLI LEHMANN