Orchestra players through experience become remarkably routined travellers. They know the good hotels and restaurants in every city of the Union, and during the long railroad jumps, especially west of the Mississippi, where distances between important cities become greater and greater, they know how to amuse themselves, each one according to his fashion. There are, of course, a few groups who play poker violently from morning till night. Others are equally constant to pinochle or bridge, while a few are perfect sharks at chess. The Frenchmen, as well as the Russian Jews, are great readers of serious literature, and books on history, philosophy, and music are in great demand among them. Whenever the train stops, even for a few minutes, a dozen jump off to play ball. As a rule, during the day we have two cars, one of which is given up to the smokers, where indeed the air becomes so thick that one could cut it with a knife. At night three or four sleepers are necessary to take care of us comfortably. The old days, when I travelled with fifty men, have gone long ago, and now we should not think of touring with an orchestra of less than eighty-five. The time for spring tours seems to be passing, however, as the Western cities are beginning to minister to the needs of their respective communities with their own excellent orchestras. For many years I accepted long summer engagements with two concerts every day, first at Willow Grove near Philadelphia, and then at Ravinia Park, on the North Shore near Chicago. The former became a great educational factor, as Philadelphia at that time had no orchestra of its own. Willow Grove Park is situated seventeen miles from that city and was built by the Rapid Transit Company in order to stimulate travel on their trolley lines. The first season, for which a military band had been engaged, had not proven a success, and I was invited the following year in the hope that a symphonic organization might do better. I began by giving them popular programmes of good music with a regular symphony night every Monday and a Wagner programme every Friday evening, with excellent results. Our audiences usually numbered from fifteen to twenty thousand. The Rapid Transit Company, realizing the importance of the concerts, promptly built a huge open-air auditorium after my own design, consisting of only a roof on pillars connecting with the shell in which the orchestra was placed. The acoustics proved exceedingly good and the out-of-doors atmosphere was preserved. I continued these concerts for seven seasons, thereby developing an audience for symphonic music which eventually and inevitably demanded a resident orchestra of its own. To-day the Philadelphia orchestra, under the leadership of Leopold Stokowski, ranks as one of the foremost of our country. Its concerts are crowded to the doors and I like to think that our seven years of pioneer work in Willow Grove have helped to lay its foundations.