"You have a pretty voice but nothing else, and not a sign of a career. Dismiss it all, for you must have something more than a few sweet notes."
She cried, and I did, too. I hate to be obliged to tell girls such disagreeable truths.
Another girl came to me with her mother. She was full of herself and her mother equally wrapped up in her. She had taken part in small village affairs in the little Connecticut town where she lived. Her voice was not bad, but she produced her notes in a wrong manner. Her teacher had encouraged her and promised her success. But teachers do that, many of them! I do not know that they can altogether be blamed.
"You don't breathe right," I said to this Connecticut girl. "You don't produce your tone right. You've no experience and, of course, you believe your teacher. But you forget one thing. Your teacher has to live and you pay him for stimulating you, even if he does so without justification."
What I did not go on to say to her, although I longed to, was that she was not the _build_ of which _prime donne_ are made. A _prima donna_ has to be compactly, sturdily made, with a strong backbone to support her hard work and a _lifted_ chest to let the tones out freely. A niece of Bret Harte's, who appeared for a time in grand opera, drooped her chest as she exhausted her breath and, when I saw her do it, I said:
"She sings well; but she won't sing long!"
My Connecticut girl was big and sloppy, a long-drawn-out person, such as is never, never gifted with a big voice.
There is something else which is very necessary for every girl to consider in going on the operatic stage. Has she the means for experimenting, or does she have to earn her living in some way meanwhile? If the former is the case, it will do no harm for her to play about with her voice, burn her fingers if need be, and come home to her mother and father not much the worse for the experience. I sympathise somewhat with the teachers in not speaking altogether freely in cases like these. There is no reason why anyone should take from a girl even one remote chance if _she_ can afford to take it. But poor girls should be told the truth. So I said to my young Connecticut friend:
"My dear, you are trying to support yourself and your mother, aren't you? Very well. Now, suppose you go on and find that you can't--what will you do then? What are you fitted for? What can you turn your hand to? What have you acquired? Look how few singers ever arrive and, if you are not one of the few, will you not merely have entirely unfitted yourself for the life struggle along other lines?"