with some difficulty that the prejudices of the Linds could be overcome, but at last they reluctantly consented that she should be educated with a view to the stage.  The little Jenny was placed by her kind patroness under the care of Croelius, a well-known music-master of Stockholm, and her abilities were not long in making their mark.  The old master was proud of his pupil, and took her to see the manager of the Court theatre, Count Puecke, hoping that this stage potentate’s favor would help to push the fortune of his protegee.  The Count, a rough, imperious man, who mayhap had been irritated by numerous other appeals of the same kind, looked coldly on the plainly clad, insignificant-looking girl, and said:  “What shall we do with such an ugly creature?  See what feet she has! and then her face!  She will never be presentable.  Certainly, we can’t take such a scarecrow.”  The effect of such a salutation on a timid, shrinking child may be imagined.  Croelius replied, with honest indignation, “If you will not take her, I, poor as I am, will myself have her educated for the stage.”  Count Puecke, who under a rough husk had some kindness of heart, then directed Jenny to sing, and he was so pleased with the quality and sentiment of her simple song that he admitted her into the theatrical school, and put her under the special tuition of Herr Albert Berg, the director of the operatic class, who was assisted by the well-known Swedish composer, Lindblad.

In two years’ time the young Jenny Lind had created for herself the reputation of being a prodigy.  It was not only that she possessed an exquisite voice, but a precocious conception and originality of style.  Her dramatic talent also showed promising glimpses of what was to come, and everything appeared to point to a shining stage career, when there came a crushing calamity.  She lost her voice.  She was now twelve years old, and in her childish perspective of life this disaster seemed irretrievable, the sunshine of happiness for ever clouded.  To become a singer in grand opera had been the great aspiration of her heart.  Her voice gone, she was soon forgotten by the fickle public who had looked on this young girl as a chrysalis soon to burst into the glory of a fuller life.  It showed the resolute stuff which nature had put into this young girl, that, in spite of this crushing downfall of her ambition, she continued her instrumental and theoretical studies with unremitting zeal for nearly four years.  At the end of this period the recovery of her voice occurred as abruptly as her loss of it had done.

A grand concert was to be given at the Court theatre, in which the fourth act of “Robert le Diable” was to be a principal feature.  No one of the singers cared for the part of Alice, as it had but one solo, and in the emergency Herr Berg thought of his unlucky young eleve, Jenny Lind, who might be trusted with such a minor responsibility.  The girl meekly consented, though, when she appeared