Into one of these seats a press committee's badge made way for me, and there the noise during the anvil chorus was fairly deafening. Before the piece was played Gilmore came over to the anvils on one side of the stand, and rather sternly placed the men, who wore white shirts instead of the customary red ones, in a different position from the one they had taken, but as if to soften his orders he said, smiling, "You are to strike first, you know, but you will do it all right, I guess." During the performance, as one set of musicians would play too loud, or too soft, or too slow, or too fast, Gilmore would look sharply at them, and raise his eyebrows almost to the top of his head, and when the fifty anvils came in, and the cannons went off, both at first in poor time, it seemed as if he would fly all to pieces, he had so much to see to, but after a few beats, and after bending his body sidewise, almost double, and sweeping his arms from above his head down to the floor, he had the thousand performers all playing in very good time. The effect upon the great audience was shown by the way they cheered at the end, and even Gilmore seemed to be well pleased, for he cried "bravo," and bowed to his musicians before he turned about and acknowledged the applause of his audience. When some one of his performers, carried away by the enthusiasm of the moment, proposed "three cheers for Gilmore," he had to fairly yell "hold on, hold on," in order to be heard, and by features and gesture frowned down and nipped in the bud the proposed compliment. The gate receipts show there were one hundred and twenty-five thousand people in attendance, and of this number I did not see one drunken person. Actually, I have been, many a time, to a county fair in Connecticut where there were not one-hundredth part as many persons present, and have seen decidedly more disturbance and drunkenness. Undoubtedly there were some among this great number who were not sober, but I did not happen to see them and I was around a good deal. It was beer, beer everywhere, and everybody drank it, nicely dressed and otherwise fine appearing women ordering their beer brought to them on the grand-stand fully as freely as the men. One hundred and fifty waiters were kept busy all day on the grand-stand alone. Coffee, lemonade, and soda could be had at exorbitant prices, but the price of beer was restricted to five cents a glass by the Brewer's Association.