I had gone over to engage German singers for the coming season, and Emil Fischer, bass from the Dresden Royal Opera, was one of those whose contract I had ready for Stanton’s signature when he arrived a month later. Emil Fischer had become discontented with his life in Dresden and in signing with us broke his contract with the Royal Opera, and according to an arrangement which all the directors of the various German opera-houses had with each other, this prevented him from ever again appearing on the stage of a German opera-house. He remained in America and became one of the main props of the Metropolitan Opera House Company, and later on of my Damrosch Opera Company. His voice was a beautiful _basso cantante_ of great range and vibrancy. His tone production was perfect, and his powers as an impersonator equalled his singing. He will always remain in my memory as the greatest _Hans Sachs_ I have ever heard. He imbued the part with a nobility and at the same time with a delightful humor that no other _Hans Sachs_ has quite equalled. As a man he was a delicious mixture of childishness, vanity, generosity, and kindliness, but I do not think that any emotions of life touched him very deeply. In dress he was always extremely fastidious, inclining toward a somewhat flamboyant love of extremes. His neckties were rather vivid, his trousers perhaps a shade lighter in gray than the most harmonious taste would demand. He had a highly developed chest, of which he was so inordinately proud that he never buttoned the upper part of his waistcoat, as if to demonstrate that no waistcoat could be cut large enough to encompass his manly proportions. Of the value of money, as far as saving it was concerned, he had no idea, and his constant effort was directed toward hiding from his wife the fact that he had money in his pocket. She was a buxom lady somewhat older than himself who, in her youth, had been a _tragedienne_ in one of the smaller German court theatres. She must have played such parts as _Medea_, and continued the rather exaggerated and gloomy articulation of her words into private life and through all the years that followed her final exit from the stage. Whenever she told me: “My Emil is not well to-day. I have made for him a plate of beef soup into which I have boiled four pounds of beef,” it boomed upon my ears like Shakespearian blank verse or like a Greek tragedy of Sophocles. I think that she annoyed Emil excessively, and that he was happiest when he could get away from her no doubt excellent control and find enjoyment among a circle of boon companions.