Our orchestra always enjoyed the long spring tours, although now and then uncomfortable happenings would mar their pleasure. Nothing makes a musician so ill-natured as to be deprived of a good square meal, and sometimes our dining-car would not connect properly or we would be so delayed as to arrive in a town only just in time to rush to the theatre and give our concert. Then I would have to exert all my powers as an orator to induce them to go directly to the theatre instead of “loitering by the wayside,” and I would quickly order large quantities of ham and swiss-cheese sandwiches to be distributed behind the scenes just before the concert. At present our players while on tour receive so much per day above their salaries for meals and beds, but in the early days I used to pay their hotel expenses, my manager engaging rooms and arranging the rates “on the American plan” before we arrived in the city in which we were to play. This system, however, never worked well because there was always intense jealousy among the musicians as to the quality or conveniences of their respective rooms; and if the first oboe found that his room did not front on as agreeable a locality as that of the first horn, he would perhaps sulk and consider that he had been unfairly treated. The newer arrangement proved much better, as it enabled some to save from the money allowed them and permitted others to “splurge” by spending more. I remember that once in those early days we had to fill in a date in a small New York State town on our way to Canada. The principal hotel had room for only about twenty, and the other members of the orchestra were quartered in four other hotels. Naturally the unfortunate five who were put into the last of these had a terrible story to tell of their sufferings when we met the following morning at the station. To be sure, the manager of the hotel had charged only a dollar for each person, and this included his supper, bed, and breakfast, but their rooms had been dismal and the beds hard. The climax was reached in the morning, when, as a frowsy waitress began to serve them their breakfast in the fly-specked dining-room on a table covered with the inevitable dirty red and white checked cloth, the manager, putting his head in at the door, shouted: “Lizzie, no eggs for the band!” This phrase became a catchword in the orchestra, and whenever my manager or I refused anything to our men, the cry immediately resounded: “Of course, no eggs for the band!”