Music: Date

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One morning, shortly after 10 o'clock, a message from the principal's office came to Mrs. L. M. Smith's eighth-grade math class at Monroe High School, Rochester, N. Y. John W. Clark, 13, brightest boy, was wanted home immediately. He was to be excused for the rest of the day. For Mme Kirsten Flagstad of the Metropolitan Opera Company wanted John Clark to have lunch with her.

This week the teacher had John make a little speech to his classmates about the bond between him and Mme Flagstad.

Some four years ago he started collecting autographs of celebrities, particularly of musical celebrities. When TIME printed Mme Flagstad's portrait on its front cover, John clipped and sent it to her to be autographed. Instead of the cover, Mme Flagstad sent back a large autographed original portrait of herself. Overwhelmed by the great one's friendly gesture, the lad wrote her to ask whether he could meet her when she visited Rochester on a forthcoming Metropolitan road tour. Gladly, she replied, would she see John backstage between the second and third acts. The date was kept and they had a pleasant little visit. The following year, when she sang in Rochester, they had another date.

During the 1938 Easter vacation, Mme Flagstad sent John $25 to come to New York as her weekend guest. She showed him the sights of New York and let him listen from backstage at the Met to an opera in which she appeared. They had a swell time.

First thing the diva did when she came to town for her recital last fortnight was to call John's house to invite him and his mother to lunch with her at the Seneca Hotel. That afternoon they had a long chat. Among other things Mme Flagstad said that she had finally decided to take a chance on going back this April to Europe at war, to Norway, where she hoped to find some place to live quietly for a time with her 20-year-old daughter and stepsons. While her accompanist Edwin McArthur was busy denying to newspapermen rumors that she was retiring this year, Mme Flagstad herself was telling John and his mother that she longed more & more for domesticity, that she might return in the fall, but that there was an excellent chance she would not.