“Well,” said Mr. Beecher, “I know Mr. Gilmore, but it’s quite evident that a man of his fair reputation and fame doesn’t know the company he is in.” Mr. Beecher invited Mr. Gilmore to “come over early with Pond and take dinner, and if I get into the Academy you will.” So we were there at the great Parnell meeting, and Mr. Gilmore heard Mr. Beecher at his best, for that meeting is on record as an event in Mr. Beecher’s life. I went home with Mr. Beecher, and he and I sat in his dining-room for some time over a light supper, I listening to his conversation on the topic of the evening just past. I left him at about eleven o’clock for my home at the Everett House, New York. Mr. Gilmore then resided in New York, at 61 West 12th Street. On my way home it occurred to me that possibly Mr. Gilmore had not yet finished his bottle of champagne, and so I rang his bell. It was just twelve o’clock. The colored boy opened the door and I asked if Mr. Gilmore were still up. He said, “Yes.” I walked back to the dining room, and there he stood, telling Mrs. Gilmore about his experiences of the evening. He turned to me, saying: “Major, I’m glad you came in. I am telling Mrs. Gilmore that this evening has been the greatest of my life; that Mr. Beecher’s speech to-night should be carved in letters of gold and placed in every schoolroom throughout the entire land.” Mr. Gilmore and I were fast friends up to the time of his death. He had many eccentricities, some of which retarded his success. He was the man and the only man who should have had the direction of the musical features at the Chicago Exposition. He was ignored, and the whole affair turned out a diabolical failure, as everybody at all versed in the management of musical affairs knew and felt at that time. It broke Mr. Gilmore’s heart to see so great an opportunity lost, and I believe that was one of the causes that hastened his death. He left one of the finest musical libraries ever collected. I do not know who has it now. He had no successor. We have Sousa and his incomparable band, that is up to date and in keeping with the requirements of the time, but the two great leaders are not alike. Gilmore, often seen plodding in the mud through the streets of Boston at the head of a score of musicians, then conceiving and carrying to successful termination the greatest musical jubilee ever known, and making Puritan Boston bow the knee to him, Irishman and Catholic though he was. Sousa, an enlisted musician in the Marine Band at Washington, becoming its leader, then, through Mr. Gilmore’s former manager, starred with a band of his own, and rising year after year, through the popularity of his own compositions and charming personnel as a conductor, to the highest place as a musician, bandmaster, and composer--not like Gilmore, but like what he is, and no one else can be--Sousa.