MY DEAR DR. MASON: I am glad to hear that you are to share your pleasant "Memories" with your friends. I hope, in looking back to the happy times when you were young, you will not forget your annual visits to dear old Farmington; for if you do not remember them in words, many old admirers will wonder how you could fail to make much of occasions so precious to them. As one of Miss Porter's girls, who can now live over again the coming to town of William Mason, Theodore Thomas, J. Mosenthal, G. Matzka, F. Bergner, and the long-looked-for chamber-concerts, I feel sure that in all of your generous giving of a God-given genius, you never gave more real pleasure than you gave those school-girls and teachers hungry for a taste of life outside the school, and for good music, the best of all company. You were then to them what you only hoped to be after years of hard work,--great men in your profession,--and they could not have dressed with more care or been more excited if they had been going to listen with royalty to the greatest of the old masters. Among the choicest of my pictures of Farmington days is that of the girls in white and dainty pinks and greens and blues, with flowers to wear and flowers to throw to you, almost dancing down that beautiful street on a summer day to "the concert," and in the foreground a quaint dark figure whom all the girls remember on festive occasions as bearing the burden of her choice with a New England sense of propriety at war with her keen sympathy with all that is natural in young people, and with the pride in her good-looking family which made her blind to their youthful follies. That was long ago when we were giddy girls, but the verdict of our heads and hearts was a true one. Sure that your memories, dear Dr. Mason, must be bright in the sunlight of so many warm friendships, I am listening to the music of long ago. March 31, 1901. LOUIS MOREAU GOTTSCHALK