The musical "stars" of those days are probably quite out of memory in these later times, but I remember some of them with pleasure. It is worth noticing that, while the earliest efforts in music in Boston produced the Handel and Haydn Society, and led to the occasional performance of a symphony of Beethoven or of Mozart, the taste of New York inclined more to operatic music. The brief visit of Garcia and his troupe had brought the best works of Rossini before the public. These performances were followed, at long intervals, by seasons of English opera, in which Mrs. Austin was the favorite prima donna. This lady sang also in oratorio, and I recall her rendering of the soprano solos in Handel's "Messiah" as somewhat mannered, but on the whole quite impressive. A higher grade of talent came to us in the person of Mrs. Wood, famous before her marriage as Miss Paton. I heard great things of her performance in "La Sonnambula," which I was not allowed to see. I did hear her, however, at concerts and in oratorios, and I particularly remember her rendering of the famous soprano song, "To mighty kings he gave his acts." Her voice was beautiful in quality and of considerable extent. It possessed a liquid and fluent flexibility, quite unlike the curious staccato and tremolo effects so much in favor to-day. My father's views of religious duty became much more stringent after my mother's death. I had been twice taken to the opera during the Garcia performances, when I was scarcely more than seven years of age, and had seen and heard the Diva Malibran, then known as Signorina Garcia, in the rôles of Cenerentola (Cinderella) and Rosina in the "Barbiere di Seviglia." Soon after this time the doors were shut, and I knew of theatrical matters only by hearsay. The religious people of that period had set their faces against the drama in every form. I remember the destruction by fire of the first Bowery Theatre, and how this was spoken of as a "judgment" upon the wickedness of the stage and of its patrons. A well-known theatre in Richmond, Va., took fire while a performance was going on, and the result was a deplorable loss of life. The pulpits of the time "improved" this event by sermons which reflected severely upon the frequenters of such places of amusement, and the "judgment" was long spoken of with holy horror.