Thus it came about that on a
March night Mildred made her debut.
The opera was ``Faust.'' As the three principal
men singers were all expensive--the tenor alone,
twelve hundred a night--Crossley put in a comparatively
modestly salaried Marguerite. She was seized
with a cold at the last moment, and Crossley ventured to
substitute Mildred Gower. The Rivi system was still in
force. She was ready--indeed, she was always ready,
as Rivi herself had been. And within ten minutes of
her coming forth from the wings, Mildred Gower had
leaped from obscurity into fame. It happens so, often
in the story books, the newly gloriously arrived one
having been wholly unprepared, achieving by sheer force
of genius. It occurs so, occasionally, in life--never
when there is lack of preparation, never by force of
unassisted genius, never by accident. Mildred
succeeded because she had got ready to succeed. How could
she have failed?
Perhaps you read the stories in the newspapers--
how she had discovered herself possessed of a marvelous
voice, how she had decided to use it in public, how
she had coached for a part, had appeared, had become
one of the world's few hundred great singers all in a
single act of an opera.
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