Mrs. Wilkinson was one-time chorus mistress for the D’Oyly Carte troupe, her husband singing the principal baritone roles. She has for many years had experience in chorus and choir training, and in addition had charge of the House of Refuge at Randall’s Island at the time when both boys and girls were admitted to that institution. It is a curious combination, and one which has brought results of the most amazing nature. The girls have been working since September on the “Pirates.” It should not by rights have taken so long, explained Mrs. Wilkinson, but the voices were in bad shape. Most of them were hard and inflexible, patterned on the nasal attainments of the cheap vaudeville performer. An understanding of the music had slowly to be created. Then, just as everything was within a few weeks of completion, the parole board would descend and release the chief soloist and five or six of the best voices in the chorus, and work would have to be begun all over again. This might have happened a week or so ago, for the prima donna’s time had expired and she was free to go. Which would have meant that “Pirates” would again have been postponed, probably for a much longer time, for Mabel’s part is difficult and requires a real voice. Mabel sent word to her family and stayed another week. It was not only the fifty-five who actually took part in the opera who presented the “Pirates.” The whole prison, two hundred women, gave it. Long ago khaki skirts and blue prison dresses were piled up on one side of the machine room, and the most amazing materials took their place. Turkey reds and purples, tinsel of silver and gold, gauzy pinks and yellows surprised those machine needles, which for thirty-six years have been bobbing up and down through sombre colors. A visitor, looking in to see those who had been sentenced to “hard labor,” would have been amazed to see them putting gold braid on three-cornered hats, sewing buttons on policemen’s uniforms. All the women attended rehearsals. They brought their crocheting, their bits of sewing, and sat quietly while the picked fifty tackled long words and difficult choruses. This in itself was a big concession. The women were all supposed to be in their rooms, and it was argued that they would be restless and unmanageable, given so much liberty. But they weren’t. They looked forward with the keenest enjoyment to the rehearsals, and it was because the company was accustomed to playing before an audience that not a member showed the slightest evidence of “stage fright,” or even of self-consciousness, at the final performance.