My days were certainly busy ones. In the morning I attended the sessions of Doctor Sauveur in French and Latin and in the afternoon I practised piano and worked hard at the arranging of the piano score of the Berlioz “Requiem.” Incidentally, I seemed to find plenty of time for games and fun of all kinds with a delightful family who had a country place there and where I got my first real glimpse of American country life, which is indeed unique and with which no other country can compare. As fast as the different numbers of my arrangement of the Berlioz “Requiem” were finished, I sent them on to my father who, after revising them, gave them to the publisher in order to have the piano scores ready for the rehearsals in the fall. He was well pleased with my work, especially the “Tuba Mirum,” in which he thought that I had condensed quite cleverly the four orchestras which Berlioz intended placed at the four corners of the stage to represent the trumpets of the last judgment. When I returned to New York in September, my father intrusted to me Section B of the New York Festival Chorus, numbering two hundred voices and the Newark Harmonic Society of Newark, New Jersey, numbering three hundred. He himself drilled the chorus of the Oratorio Society of four hundred at which I always played the piano accompaniments, and Mr. Cortada, an old pupil of my father’s, trained a section in Brooklyn and another in Nyack, New York. I hurled myself at my task with such vehemence and enthusiasm that by the time the Festival came along my choruses were letter-perfect, but I had become voiceless. My vocal cords had quite gone back on me in justifiable anger at my abuse of them. The choral works to be performed included the Berlioz “Requiem,” Rubinstein’s “Tower of Babel,” Handel’s “Messiah,” Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony,” and shorter selections. The monster chorus and orchestra numbered fifteen hundred, and a special stage and sounding-board were built at the Seventh Regiment Armory at which the Festival took place. The organ from St. Vincent’s Church was transferred bodily, and I was intrusted with the organ accompaniments. An enormous audience of ten thousand people attended every performance, and the public acclaimed my father with much enthusiasm as America’s greatest musician. Such happy, happy days!