Immediately after her few but brilliant appearances at Covent Garden last season, Madame Melba rented a charmingly-situated house, called "Fernley," near the river at Maidenhead. Here she entertained many friends during the month of August. A very interesting "group" photograph of three distinguished Australians--Melba, Mr. Haddon Chambers, and Mr. Bertram MacKennal--taken at that time on the lawn at Fernley, is shown at the top of this page. It will be interesting to your readers that the last-named distinguished compatriot of Madame Melba's is executing a bust of the _diva_, which she has decided to present to the Public Library of Melbourne. A bust of the Melbourne Melba, by the Melbourne MacKennal, is obviously an artistic event of peculiar interest. [Illustration: MADAME MELBA, MR. HADDON CHAMBERS, AND MR. BERTRAM MACKENNAL. _From a Photo. by H. Gude, Maidenhead._] By the way, the popular morning "daily" that unwittingly represented Melba as an athletic kind of lady, skilled in the gentle art of rowing, was sadly in error! Far and away the most interesting episode of the stay at Fernley was a visit which the _prima donna_ and some members of her house-party paid to the grave of the poet Gray in Stoke Poges churchyard. Here, it will be remembered, Gray wrote his beautiful "Elegy"; and here, too, Melba (who, I omitted to say, is an accomplished organist, and often used to play that instrument in the Scots Church at Melbourne) expressed a desire to try the organ in the charming old church of Stoke Poges. Thereby hangs this tale: The rector, on it being represented to him that "Madame Melba would like to play the organ," courteously handed over the necessary keys, and Melba gave great pleasure to her audience of half-a-dozen friends by playing and singing for them a selection of pieces, which included the Gounod "Ave Maria," and ended with the National Anthem. Asked by one of the party how she had enjoyed the impromptu sacred concert, the old lady who was in charge of the church, and whose services had been requisitioned to blow the organ, enthusiastically rejoined, "Oh, it were all beautiful, m'm, but 'God Save the Queen' were best of all!"