Democratic Sentinel, Volume 4, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1881 — A Tenor’s Wife. [ARTICLE]

A Tenor’s Wife.

The following, from the French, gives a comical description of the miseries of a tenor’s wife ; “Yes, Jenny, we have 150,000 francs a year; the praises of my husband are sounded every day in the newspapers, he is applauded every night he sings, and is a very king in his art. But you don’t know what it is to be the wife of a tenor. Those who flatter my husband, and they are numerous, are incessantly telling him, Monsieur Michael, you have a mine of diamonds in your throat. That may be true; I dofi’t say it is not, but if you could understand what consequences it entails—a mine of diamonds in a man’s throat. Michael is always as cross as a bear- because of the temperature. A barometer is less variable. He is continually opening and shutting the windows ; when they are open he wants them shut, and when they are shut he says he stifles. You have no idea of the trouble we have at hotels to prevent his taking cold. Even the style of carpet becomes a study. And the cartloads of furs we carry about with us. And the difficulty we have with the fires. There is also a long chapter as to what he may and may not eat; this is too strong and that too weak. On the night he sings, there is a sirup which he must drink five times during an act, and a wash of brandy and camphor with which to rub his throat. From morning till night a tenor thinks of nothing but himself; he listens to himself sing; he studies poses before a looking-glass; he calls after the servants, ‘Jane, muffle the doorbell ; its noise affects my nerves. Briggitte, don’t pass before me again; you make a draught’ He interrogates his throat every ten minutes, la, la, la. Never a sensible word, always la, la, la; at table he does not talk for fear of destroying his la, la, la. If I ask him to take me out on a fine day, he runs to the piano and exercises his la, la, la.” “Thebe is not a corporation on the round globe whose specific gravity is greater than that of the old 2Etna Life, of Hartford. It is solid as granite and as true as Weekly Item,