It is, I think, illustrative of Madame Melba's large humanity that the simpler and more sympathetic the anecdote, the better is she pleased to tell it. For example, "one touch of nature" is to her much more than to tell of her many meetings with Royalty--of her brilliant career as queen of opera--of her impressions of the many great ones of the world into whose society she has been thrown. Of her _début_ in opera she readily speaks, for must it not always rank as one of her pleasantest memories? It occurred at the Brussels Opera House, and at the age of twenty-two. Not at that time knowing French, Melba was permitted to sing in Italian, while the other artists sang French--an unprecedented concession to a _débutante_ on the part of the local opera authorities. On that memorable evening, the next box to the one occupied by some friends and relatives of Madame Melba contained a lady and gentleman. At the close of the first act, the latter asked his companion as to her opinion of the _débutante_, when the lady was heard to reply, "_Débutante!_ Nonsense! I heard her in Madrid ten years ago. She was an awful failure, and _she's forty if she's a day_!" "Did you feel any resentment when you heard the story?" I asked. "Not in the least," replied Madame Melba, laughing merrily, "albeit in those early days I had not grown accustomed, as, alas! I have since, to hearing strangely false reports about myself--reports sometimes amazing, sometimes absurd, and sometimes, I fear, malicious. Besides, I was in far too good a humour with the public success I had achieved to feel angry; and if the story appears in your article, and the lady sees it, I shall feel amply avenged." Two incidents in connection with her first American tour were related to me so feelingly by the _prima donna_, that I must do my best to reproduce them. The first occurred in New York. Melba had been practising her part at her hotel one afternoon. Just as she had finished, and was coming out of her rooms, she encountered a strange lady, whose rooms opened into the same corridor. The unknown approached her, and said, "Madame, I think you would be touched to hear what my little boy said just now. He is lying in bed getting over an illness; and when you began to sing he lifted his tiny forefinger and whispered, 'Hist, mummy! Birdie!'" [Illustration: MADAME MELBA (PRESENT DAY). _From a Photo. by Reutlinger, Paris._]