As Sousa is preëminently a man of action, so his career and characteristics are best outlined by incidents. One in connection with his operatic composition strikingly illustrates his pluck and determination. Before he attained any great degree of prominence in the musical world, Sousa submitted an opera to Francis Wilson, offering to sell it outright for one thousand five hundred dollars. Wilson liked the opera, but the composer was not fortified by a great name, so he declined to pay more than one thousand dollars for the piece. The composer replied that he had spent the best part of a year on the work, and felt that he could not take less than his original demand. Wilson was obdurate, and Sousa ruefully put the manuscript back into his portfolio. Some time afterward a march which the bandmaster sent to a well-known publishing house caught the public favor. The publishers demanded another at once. The composer had none at hand, but suddenly thought of the march in his discarded opera, and forwarded it without waiting to select a name. While he was pondering thoughtfully on the subject of a title, Sousa and a friend one evening went to the Auditorium in Chicago, where “America” was then being presented. When the mammoth drop curtain, with the painted representation of the Liberty Bell was lowered, the bandmaster’s companion said, with the suddenness of an inspiration: “There is a name for your new march.” That night it was sent on to the publishers. Up to date, this one selection from the opera for which Francis Wilson refused to pay fifteen hundred dollars has netted its composer thirty-five thousand dollars. A MAN WHO NEVER RESTS. Sousa has practically no vacations. Throughout the greater part of the autumn, winter and spring, his band is _en tour_ through this country and Canada, giving, as a rule, two concerts each day, usually in different towns. During the summer, his time is occupied with daily concerts at Manhattan Beach, near New York. Despite all this, he finds time to write several marches or other musical selections each year, and for several years past has averaged each year an operatic production. Any person who is at all conversant with the subject knows that the composition of the opera itself is only the beginning of the composer’s labor, and Sousa has invariably directed the rehearsals with all the thoroughness and attention to detail that might be expected from a less busy man. The bandmaster is a late riser, and in that, as in other details, the routine of his daily life is the embodiment of regularity and punctuality. In reply to my question as to what produces his never-failing good health, he said: “Absolute regularity of life, plenty of sleep, and good, plain, substantial food.”