Memoirs of an American Prima Donna Part 33

There is a sadness in all things that pa.s.s; We love the moonlight better for the sun, And the day better when the night is near.

The last look on a place where we have dwelt Reveals more beauty than we dreamed before, When it was daily ...

In our big, young country of America there are the possibilities of many another singer greater than I have been. I shall be proud and grateful if the story of my high ambitions, hard work, and kindly treatment should chance to encourage one of these. For, while it is true that there is nothing that should be chosen less lightly than an artistic career, it is also true that, having chosen it, there is nothing too great to be given up for it. I have no other message to give; no further lesson to teach. I have lived and sung, and, in these memories, have tried to tell something of the living and the singing: but when I seek for a salient and moving word as a last one, I find that I am dumb. Yet I feel as I used to feel when I sang before a large audience. Somewhere out in the audience of the world there must be those who are in instinctive sympathy with me. My thoughts go wandering toward them as, long ago, my thoughts would wander toward the unknown friends sitting before me in the theatre and listening. So poignant is this sense within me that, halting as my message may have been, I feel quite sure that somehow, here and there, some one will hear it, responsive in the heart.