The

play in a smaller hall would shut out the crowd, especially the poor, in favor of a rich and exclusive season audience. poor themselves did not seem to worry; but the argument undoubtedly cost us large subscriptions from many rich and public-spirited men. We secured, however, about 8,500 subscriptions, aggregating $650,000; yet we were obliged to borrow over $300,000 to finance a total investment of upward of $950,000. We are still paying interest on that loan, but hope to extinguish it in course of time out of gifts and legacies such as naturally come to established institutions of a public character. One lady, who withholds her name as yet, has commenced with $25,000, available at her death. Another,

Mrs. Thomas Nelson Page, a constant sup porter of the orchestra, though a nonresident, has given

BRUNO STEINDEL First Cellist

$50,000, well invested, for the general income of the Association. Mrs. Marshall Field has started the sinking fund with $5,000. $5,000. May their examples be followed. freely.

Besides the Hall and the endowment funds, the orchestra possesses Theodore Thomas's musical library, presented to

the Association by his widow and children, an asset whose value can hardly be over estimated. It was the accumulation of his lifetime, and had cost well above $100,000. During forty years he personally provided and owned all the music, both scores and parts, which he performed, often for festival orchestras and choruses of huge dimensions; and he performed substantially the entire literature. During the first fifteen years of this period he played first violin in his then famous string

quartet. It was his habit to buy the scores of all new music as it appeared, if at all worthy of the name, whether he used them or not. Consequently all the interesting works for orchestra, great and small, the operas, oratorios, cantatas, masses, concertos, arias, transcriptions innumerable, and all the great chamber music, tons in weight, in orderly arrangement, lie upon the shelves of that library. It is rare indeed that a work called for cannot instantly be placed upon the desks of the musicians. The Year Book printed by the Association each year, containing a résumé of the eighteen years' repertoire as performed, which is in itself a liberal education in music, includes but a part of the contents of the catalogue of the library. Thomas's own scores, with his autograph markings, showing his interpretations of the greater works, and his reference library containing many rare books and interesting manuscript scores, have been committed by the Association to the custody of the Newberry Library, for safety, and for accessibility to music students.

One other most valued possession of the orchestra might almost be called a legacy of its founder-namely, his successor, Mr. Frederick Stock, for ten years one of the viola players, and during the last two years of Mr. Thomas's life his understudy and Assistant Director. One of the most extraordinary things in Thomas's long career-he was over fifty years before the public, and left over ten thousand printed programmes-was that he never missed a single performance, and never was late but twice, both times because of railway washouts. The fact speaks volumes for his physical strength and mastery of detail. Knowing that these could not last forever, for several years before his death he looked for a younger man to whom he might transmit the traditions of good art as he held them; and he was attracted by Mr. Stock's exceptional ability as a composer (in some works submitted for Thomas's criticisms) and by his charming personality and serious character. Still continuing to play the viola as a regular thing, Mr. Stock was occasionally called by Mr. Thomas to the conductor's desk at the Chicago concerts, and finally was appointed by him Assistant Director, in full charge

of the orchestra when upon the road; after which Thomas traveled no more himself. At the commencement of the season of 1903-4 the doctors warned Thomas that his heart was defective, and might fail at any time if he kept on conducting; but he decided to work through the season, if possible, in order to break in the musicians to the changed conditions sure to be found in the new Hall, then approaching completion. Two weeks after its opening, in the midst of the hard work of that breaking in, aggravated by bad weather and damp walls, illness came in the form of pneumonia, and Thomas passed away at the very height of his artistic powers. Fortunate indeed we then were that the modest and brilliant young Assistant was there to take up the Director's baton, which he has held so lightly and so firmly ever since, growing each year in his art and in the estimation of the orchestra. the public, and the critics.

As to the public and the critics, those important factors in all art life, the Thomas Orchestra has a public of ten to twelve thousand people, trained to keen discrimination by eighteen years of concert-going, which Saint-Saëns, after his recent tour of the United States, characterized as the most sympathetic he had met there. It has a considerable patronage, rather difficult to estimate, among the six to seven thousand students of the musical colleges of Chicago. It has critics-I refer to those of the daily press-whose notices of its concerts, and others, though differing as criticisms always differ, are characterized nowadays by first-hand knowledge and seriousness of purpose. How well I remember the notices which greeted our first concert in 1891, as a full-page" Society" event, with lists of names and toilettes; hardly more!

The public has paid in eighteen years about $1,800,000 into the orchestra box office. The $1,000,000 in addition which has been donated, over and above boxoffice receipts, for its support and endowment, has for the most part been provided by about one hundred modest and generous men and women. Let me here pay tribute to them. They are anonymous; no list of names and amounts has ever been made public-they have preferred to

remain unknown. From the $75,000 of the millionairess to the ten cents of the scrubwoman, all has been given without thought of notoriety. Verily, it was a rare thing that 100-no, 8,500-givers should not "let their right hand know what their left hand doeth."

Equally rare has been the spirit of those who as trustees and members of the governing Association have given, with their money, their effort and the prestige of their names. None have posed as connoisseurs or patrons of art, or sought to direct the Director of the orchestra. They have been content quietly to do collectively for good music in Chicago what Major Higginson has done singly in Boston, and indeed they could not have had a better exemplar either in deed or in manner. Conspicuous among them, besides those already mentioned, have been the Glessners, the McCormicks, the Adamses, Messrs. Lawson, Brown, Otis, and Baird. With them should be named, as a heavy contributor from the first, Thomas himself. For his established business in and near New York yielded him about $10,000 per annum more than he came to Chicago for. That was his yearly sacrifice for good art. Our business managers also have deserved all praise for unselfish, discriminating, and dignified work.

We are now buying some fine old violins, to equip the rank and file of our string choir withal; and we hope to lie back in peace and enjoy their mellow tone, after the strenuous years recounted above. We believe that the possession of its Hall has indeed made the Theodore Thomas Orchestra "permanent." Never since it was occupied have we had to ask a dollar of assistance. Naturally, we shall not feel quite safe until our debt is paid off. Other halls will be built, doubtless, and take away some of our rents. Opera will be established in Chicago, with its appeal to the eye and its inevitable lowering of standards, and may cost us some of our fashionable supporters. But eighteen

years' hearing of the great master works, given with a perfection of technique and interpretation practically impossible in opera, the greatest music given in the greatest way," have surely laid in the hearts of ten or twelve thousand Chicagoans, and of their children after them, a firm foundation for the immortality of our Orchestra.

For beauty means immortality in this world. Karnak and Corinth have been in ruins for centuries, but the mystery of the sphinx and the revelation of the column are our living heritage. Vikings and Skalds are legendary now, their long ships buried in the drifted sands, their very language "dead" for ages; old Omar's empty glass has been turned down for near a thousand years; yet never, I suppose, did Nibelungenlied or Rubáiyát fly so far and wide-vivus per ora virorum-as in this our day. Year by year canvas and mar ble, casket and jewel, carpet and tapestry, quit the palaces for the museums, the changeful possession of the few for the enduring ownership of the many. The palaces themselves, the lovely parks and stately castles, the one-time cradles of luxury and fortresses of privilege, are become the holiday places of the peoples, the transmittenda of the world. By a sort of glorified survival of the fittest, almost all that long outlives the generations, that they seem able to transmit to the race, is that which they have contributed to beauty and tradition.

So, for Bach and Beethoven and the rest, those great poets of the universal language which will never die-those mighty architects in sound, from whose airy battlements and cloud-capped towers, rising ever fresh and glorious, time cannot throw down one glittering pinnacle—I can conceive of no century, of no race, that will reject them. He that hath ears to hear will always hear. With confidence, therefore, we can commit the Theodore Thomas Orchestra for all time to our city of Chicago, for its delight and in loving mem. ory of the great man whose name it bears.