I find this in my diary. On returning from Italy, we went over to “Wangensbach” by Kussnacht, on Lake Zurich, to live for a Summer or two. Wangensbach is an old chateau, or half castle-place, built by the Knights of St. John in the long, long ago. The walls are three feet thick, in places more, and there are all sorts of vaulted wine cellars and mysterious, walled-in places, under the building. The view from the windows and terrace, of blue lake and snowy mountains, is superb in the extreme. The chateau is now owned by Conrad Meyer, the Swiss poet and novelist. It is six miles to my office in the city, and I walk in and out daily, though I could go on the pretty steamers for a sixpence. Here, on a May day, “Baby Hélène” came into the world, to gladden eight sweet years for us. [Illustration: Wangensbach.--_Page 106._] Spite of Joaquin Miller’s prognostications at Rome about plays, I was foolish enough to go ahead, and write a melodrama in blank verse. Schultz-Beuthen, a friend of Liszt and follower of Wagner, wrote delightful music for its songs. I went up to Mannheim, and attended the plays in the old theater where Schiller was once a director, and where some of his best plays were brought out. Miller wrote me about this little play of mine as follows: “N. Y. HOTEL, N. Y., U. S. A., Feb. 11, 1879. “MY DEAR MR. BYERS:--I remember you with pleasure, remember the compliment you paid me in preferring a visit to me before the good Pope. “I have read your pretty play with pleasure, and have the opinion of able managers. And I am bound to say, my dear boy, that it is for the leisure, not for the stage. Like all your work, it is well done, verses _especially_, but how on earth do you expect to present five scenes in one act in this swift modern day? All modern plays have, as a rule, but one scene to the act. Then you have almost altogether omitted _humor_. Try again. By the by, I last night brought forth a play. See enclosed bill. It was most emphatically _damned_. Write me if I can do ought for you, and believe me Truly yours, J. W. MILLER.” My libretto and the music had pleased Minnie Hauk, the singer, and she herself thought of using it, but the objection to the Wagner kind of music came up. Her husband, Count Wartegg, wrote me from Paris: “The libretto is very interesting, so original, and so well written that its success is assured.” [Illustration: Minnie Hauk.--_Page 107._]