Anton Seidl was a young man when he came to New York, but he had filled the position of secretary to Richard Wagner, and been a member of his household for six years. Before then he had studied at the Leipsic Conservatory (which he entered in October, 1870), and been a chorus master or accompanist at the Vienna Opera. There he came under the eyes of Hans Richter, who sent him to Wagner when the latter asked for a young man who could give him such help on "The Ring of the Nibelung" as Richter had given him on "Die Meistersinger"--that is, to write out the clean score from the composer's hurried autograph. The period which he spent with Wagner was from 1872 to 1879. During all the preparations for the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876 he was one of the poet-composer's executive officers. He was one of the assistant conductors on the stage during the festival, and afterward conducted the preliminary rehearsals for the concerts which Wagner gave in London and elsewhere to recoup himself for the losses made at the festival. Then, on Wagner's recommendation, he was appointed conductor at the Municipal Theater at Leipsic (his associates being Victor Nessler and Arthur Nikisch), later on of Angelo Neumann's "Richard Wagner Theater," which gave representations of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" in many cities of Germany, Holland, England, and Italy, and still later of the Municipal Theater in Bremen--the post which he held when the death of Dr. Damrosch created the vacancy which brought him to New York. All this he had accomplished before his thirty-fifth year (he was born in Pesth on May 7, 1850), and he was not yet thirty when Wagner, in a speech delivered in Berlin, alluded to him as "the young artist whom I have brought up, and who is now accomplishing astounding things." Naturally, when he came to New York, he was looked upon as a prophet, priest, and paladin of Wagner's art. For twelve years he filled a large place in the music of New York, in concert room as well as opera house, and when he died it was like his predecessor, in the fulness of his powers, and in the midst of his activities. But this belongs to a later chapter of this story.