DIVA TELLS HIGHLIGHTS OF HER OPERATIC LIFE

"I certainly do not want my child to becomes a singer or an actor, because professionals lead a dog's life. An operatic career requires an iron constitution and means continual travelling around; people think we just have one grand time right along, but we really have to live almost exclusively for others, and our performances must come off whether we are dead or alive."

Miss Edith Mason sighed as she was thus commenting on her strenuous career, in the Hotel Ritz Carlton yesterday; but almost momentarily her face brightened because "There are also more cheerful moments in our lives," as she put it. "Once I was taking the part of Marguerete in 'Faust'; the performance was in Montreal and I had been given a beautiful fancy petticoat to wear. Well, I have to kneel down and pray in one act there, and my heel caught in that beautifully complicated lace netting. When I started to get up, the lace began in tear and this impromptu tail trailed after me as I strode across the stage. The audience was laughing, they had seen the predicament I was in, so, keeping on singing. I just stooped down and tore off the entire reel of lace, put it into the jewel box that I have to carry, and slammed the cover shut. I have never before or since received such enthusiastic applause as after that act."