All along the route it was difficult to persuade people that an entertainment of pianoforte-playing exclusively could be made interesting. They had never heard of such a thing, and insisted that there ought to be some singing for the sake of variety. We stopped in Albany, Troy, Utica, and many other places on the way to Chicago, where I gave two concerts, one of which took place on New Year's eve. After the concert I attended a large reception given in a private residence. I remember being struck by the fact, as it seemed to me, that there were so many young ladies at this reception, and I asked the hostess if there were no married ladies in Chicago. "Why, Mr. Mason," she replied, "there are only two or three unmarried ladies in the room." At that period Chicago was full of young men who had come from the Eastern States, principally New England. After staying in Chicago for two or three years and getting well started in business they would get married, many of them going to their native places for their brides. This accounted for the youthful appearance of the assemblage, and illustrates in part the very rapid growth of Chicago. Up to the time we arrived in Chicago we had rainy weather constantly, and partly on this account we were out of pocket. Dyer was for going back to New York by the quickest route. I said: "No; I am going back through the same towns, and shall give concerts in every one of them. If the people liked my playing well enough they will come again and bring their neighbors. If they did not like it, I shall soon find it out." As it turned out, I had much larger audiences all the way home. "YANKEE DOODLE" AND "OLD HUNDRED" Copying the custom of Ferdinand Hiller, I used to close my concerts by an improvisation upon themes suggested by the audience. All sorts of themes were put into the hat--from Mozart, Beethoven, "Jordan is a hard road to travel," "We won't go home till morning," and many negro melodies. I had a faculty of developing a subject in such a way as to hold my audience. One night somebody sent up the request that I should play simultaneously "Old Hundred" with one hand and "Yankee Doodle" with the other. This I did, merely to show that even two such dis-similar melodies could be played together in a musical way. There was a good deal of applause, but also considerable hissing from the religions element, so I made a speech explaining that I meant no disrespect to "Old Hundred" by placing it in such close connection with "Yankee Doodle," and that the melody which had to a certain extent been adopted as a national air was on that account worthy of being played with any hymn.