having tea with my mother one afternoon early in my Harrigan and Hart weeks.
"Annie, I want you to hear Will sing," my fond mother proposed, and Annie Louise listened with that polite attention an artist gives to the precocities of a friend's children, while I sang "The Palms" in French. I never had sung a note on the stage, I could not even read music, but I did unquestionably have the makings of a voice. Miss Cary was pleasantly surprised and flattering.
"That is a fine natural voice," she exclaimed. "By all means it must be cultivated."
Immediately I enrolled under Luigi Meola of the New York College of Music, and when the Harrigan and Hart engagement ended I gave my undivided time for eight months to my voice. Three months after I began, Meola's pupils gave a concert at Steinway Hall. I sang Schumann's "Two Grenadiers"; Miss Cary came, held her hands high above her head and clapped them noisily.
For practice in reading music by sight, I joined Samuel Warren's choral union. Warren was organist at Grace Church, then the parish of the Reverend Doctor, later Bishop, Potter. And at Grace Church I shortly became
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