Miss Euterpe Diatone is a concert-singer of average talent and popularity, if you will take my word for it; but if you prefer to accept her own version of the matter, you will learn that her genius excites the jealousy of the entire musical profession, also that if the public could only get their rights and the complete satisfaction of their musical desires, they would never hear any woman sing other than Miss Euterpe Diatone. But the concert-agents and the _entrepreneurs_ are, as she will tell you, so venal and obtuse, and so easily influenced by the jealousy of the other vocalists, who cotton to them, and bribe them, maybe—who knows? Anyhow, Miss Diatone can tell you of numbers of instances where other singers, of less ability and fame than herself, have had engagements which ought to have been offered to her; and she knows for a fact that the concert-givers cut their own throats by this policy, for friends of her own actually stayed away from those concerts, only because she was not engaged to sing. Of course all this is conveyed in a tone of becoming modesty, and if you want confirmation of these blatant facts, you have but to ask Miss Diatone’s mother, Madame Brown-Smith. Though, if you value my advice in any particular, you will be content with the daughter’s statement, for Madame Brown-Smith has always much to say on the subject of her daughter; and beautiful as motherly devotion undoubtedly is, the professional enthusiasm of the vocalist’s mother is apt to become a little oppressive. She is a veritable touter, regarding her daughter’s voice as the commercial traveller looks upon the article of his trade, and “pushing” it accordingly. As you listen to her depreciating every vocalist in turn, and telling you how Euterpe was encored so many times at such a concert, whereas every other performer “finished without a hand,” and how Euterpe was paid so much by such a publisher for singing a certain song, which is really such rubbish you have wondered how any one could have had the impertinence even to print it, you begin almost to wonder whether music is a “divine art” after all, and not a trade on a par with the selling of patent pills, soap, or grey shirtings. Truly the modern singer—and her mother—are terrible disillusioners. [Illustration] When we think of all that music is, and all it means, its magic influence, its mighty power, and when we reflect that, through its medium, as the rhythmic expression of all unspoken emotion, the singer or the player may soothe a single heart or move a multitude, awaken a soul to love or rouse a nation to patriotism, what can we say of the musician who, with this splendid gift of song, merely turns it to sordid account? And yet singers must live. That is the difficulty, for in these days art must suffer that artists may prosper.