After the Sunday concert a number of motor-buses took the orchestra and musical instruments quickly to the station, while our Italian friends stood around and marvelled at what they called “American efficiency,” and we rolled out of Milan and Italy on our way to Strassbourg, exceedingly tired, but with a feeling that we had brought Italy and America many steps nearer to each other by our visit. We had been simply overwhelmed with demonstrations of affection from the moment we arrived in Italy, and there is something in the almost childlike manner in which the Italians demonstrate their feelings that endeared them very quickly to us. They are seething with vitality, and the very intensity of their emotions, which to the cooler North American temperament sometimes seems exaggerated, is a force to be reckoned with in the future of the world. While their civilization is the oldest in Europe they seem to be the youngest people of to-day, and in my profession and the kindred arts I expect great things from the Italian people as soon as the dreadful aftermath of the World War shall have been cleared away. I was much interested in Strassbourg and Metz in the curious mixture of German and French civilization. In Strassbourg we were very cordially received by the new director of the Conservatory, M. Ropartz, of Nancy, one of France’s most distinguished musicians. At Metz the mayor made a speech of welcome and with a group of citizens gave us a “vin d’honneur” after the concert. Both cities gave us audiences evidently accustomed to concerts of symphonic music and with a fine appreciation of what we would offer them. On the public square in Strassbourg I noticed a group of citizens excitedly pointing toward a steeple on the opposite side and, lo and behold, I saw a stork, the first one to get back from his winter sojourn in Africa to spend the summer in his native haunts. The reader will wonder that I have not something more exciting to relate, but I confess that the complete freedom from the official and social engagements after our hectic weeks in Italy came like a heavenly balm, not to mention the agreeable change of living again in a hotel with real waiters, chambermaids, and cooks to minister to one’s comfort. I looked at that stork and suddenly an old doggerel jumped into my head that I had sung with other children over fifty years before, and which begins: “Storch, Storch, Steiner, mit de langen Beiner”— and here was perhaps a descendant of the very bird whom we had greeted so long ago. I was inclined to become sentimental over this interesting possibility, but the stork flew away without showing any reciprocal interest and my mood did not last long. We returned to Paris the following day, and on the morning of June 4 started in a special train to Fontainebleau, where the entire orchestra were to be guests of the mayor and municipality for the day.