Carlton had to go on in them. The critics next day gave him a couple of columns of praise; but Morgan, whose wardrobe was gorgeous, was a complete failure in his _début_. Our manager had finally to tell him that he could be second tenor or resign. In six weeks he was drawing seventy dollars less salary than Carlton, who was a baritone and a beginner. Carlton said that about this time Wilfred Morgan came up to him exclaiming,
"Well, Bill, I wish I had your voice and you had my clothes!"
William Carlton was a young Englishman, only twenty-three when he joined us; but he was already married and had two children. When we were rehearsing _The Bohemian Girl_, in the scene where the stolen daughter is recognised and Carlton had to take me in his arms, he said:
"Not lower than _this_!" said I, pointing to my forehead. He was much amused. Indeed, he was always laughing at my mother and me for our prudish ways; and my not marrying was always a joke between us.
"It's a sin," he declared once, when we were talking on a train, "a woman who would make such a perfect wife!"
"Louise," interrupted my mother sternly, "don't talk so much! You'll tire your voice!"
My good mother! She was always ruffling up like an indignant hen about me. In one scene of another opera, I remember, the villain and I had been playing rather more strenuously than usual and he caught my arm with some force. I staggered a little as I came off the stage and my mother flew at him.
"Don't you dare touch my daughter so roughly," she cried, much annoyed.
Mr. Carlton has paid me a nice tribute when writing of those days and of me at that time. He has said:
I have the most grateful memory of the sympathetic assistance I received from the gifted _prima donna_ when I arrived in this country under the management of Maurice Grau and C. D. Hess, who were conducting the business details of the Kellogg Grand Opera Company. Like many Englishmen, I was quite unprepared for the evidences of perfection which characterised the production of opera in the United States and, as I had not yet attained my twenty-fourth year, I was somewhat awed by the importance of the _rôles_ and the position I was imported to fulfil. It was in a great measure due to the gracious help I received from Miss Kellogg that, at my _début_ at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, as Valentine in _Faust_ to her Marguerite, I achieved a success which led up to my renewing the engagement for four consecutive years.