On our way from Nice we went to Milan to visit the Exposition, which was an artistically interesting one, and at which we happened to see the father and mother of the present King of Italy. From Milan we went to Aix-les-Bains; and from there to Paris.
I returned to America without an engagement; but on October 5th the Kellogg Concert Company, under the management of Messrs. Pond and Bachert, gave the first concert of a series in Music Hall, Boston. I was supported by Brignoli, the "silver-voiced tenor," Signer Tagliapietra, and Miss Alta Pease, contralto. With us, also, were Timothie Adamowski, the Polish violinist; Liebling, the pianist, and the Weber Quartette. My reception in America, after nearly two years' absence abroad, was, really, almost an ovation. But I want to say that Boston has always been particularly gracious and cordial to me. By way of showing how appreciative was my reception, I cannot resist giving an extract from the Boston Transcript of the following morning:
Her singing of her opening number, Filina's Polonaise in Mignon, showed at once that she had brought back to us unimpaired both her voice and her exquisite art; that she is now, as formerly, the wonderfully finished singer with the absolutely beautiful and true soprano voice. Her stage experience during the past few years, singing taxing grand soprano parts, so different and more trying to the vocal physique than the light florid parts, the Aminas, Zerlinas, and Elviras, she began by singing, seems to have had no injurious effect upon the quality and trueness of her voice, which has ever been fine and delicate; just the sort of beautiful voice which one would fear to expose to much intense dramatic wear and tear. Its present perfect purity only proves how much may be dared by a singer who can trust to a thoroughly good method.
In the following May I sang with Max Strakosch's opera company in Providence to an exceptionally large audience. One of the daily newspapers of the city said, in reference to this occasion:
Miss Kellogg must take it as a compliment to herself personally, for the other artists were unknown here, and therefore it must have been her name that attracted so many. She has always been popular here, and has made many personal as well as professional friends. She must have added many more of the latter last night, for she never appeared to better advantage. She was well supported by Signor Giannini as Faust [we gave Faust and I was Marguerite] and Signor Mancini as Mephistopheles.
This same year, 1882, I went on a concert trip through the South. In New Orleans I had a peep into the wonderful pawnshops, large, spacious, all filled with beautiful things. I had long been a collector of pewter and silver and old furniture and, on this trip, took advantage of some of my opportunities. For instance, I bought the bureau that had belonged to Barbara Frietchie, and a milk jug and some spoons that had belonged to Henry Clay. Also, I visited Libby Prison and various other prisons, a battle-field, and several cemeteries. One cemetery was half filled with the graves of boys of seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen years of age, showing that in the Civil War the South could not have kept it up much longer. The sight was pitiful!
In 1884 I went on a concert tour with Major Pond in the West, making of it so far as we could, as Pond said, something of a picnic. We crossed by the Northern Pacific, seeing, I remember, the ranch of the Duc de Morney, son of the Duc de Morney who was one of Louis Philippe's creations, and who had married the daughter of a wealthy ranchman, Baron von Hoffman. The house of his ancestor in the Champs Élysées and the house next door that he built for his mistress were points of interest in Paris when I first went there. In Miles City, on the way to Helena, Montana, we visited some of the gambling dens, and were interested in learning that the wildest and worst one in the place was run by a Harvard graduate. The streets of the town were strangely deserted and this we did not understand until a woman said to me:
"Umph! they don't show themselves when respectable people come along!"
My memory of the trip and of the Yellowstone Park consists of a series of strangely beautiful and primitive pictures. We passed through a prairie fire, when the atmosphere was so hot and dense that extra pressure of steam was put on our locomotive to rush our train through it. Never before had I seen Indian women carrying their papooses. I particularly recall one settlement of wigwams on a still, wonderful evening, the chiefs gorgeous in their blankets, when the fires were being lighted and the spirals of smoke were ascending straight up into the clear atmosphere. One day a couple of Indians ran after the train. They looked very fine as they ran and finally succeeded in getting on to the rear platform, where they rode for some distance. At Deer Lodge I sang all of one evening to two fine specimens of Indian manhood. We went down the Columbia River in a boat, greatly enjoying the impressive scenery. One of my most vivid mental impressions was that of an Indian fisherman, standing high out over the rushing waters, at least forty feet up, on a projection of some kind that had been built for the purpose of salmon fishing, his graceful, vigorous bronze form clearly silhouetted against the background of rock and foliage and sky. On the banks of the river farther along we saw a circus troupe boiling their supper in a huge caldron and smoking the kalama or peace pipe. I was so hungry I wanted to eat of the caldron's contents but, on second thoughts, refrained. And we stopped at Astoria where the canning of salmon was done, a town built out over the river on piles. The forest fires had caused some confusion and, for one while, we could hardly breathe because of the smoke. Indeed we travelled days and days through that smoke. The first cowboy I ever saw drove me from the station of Livingston through Yellowstone Park. In Butte City my company went down into the Clarke Copper Mine, but I did not care to join them in the undertaking. Our first sight of Puget Sound was very beautiful. And it was at Puget Sound that I first saw half-, or, rather, quarter-breeds. I remember Pond saying how quickly the half-breeds die of consumption.
Later, that same year, I went South again on another concert tour. All through the State of Mississippi there was a strange, horrible flavour to the food, I recall, and, so all-pervading was this flavour that finally I could hardly eat anything. The contralto and I were talking about it one day on the train and saying how glad we should be to get away from it. There being no parlour-cars, we were in an ordinary coach, and a woman who sat in front of me and overheard us, turned around and said: