Full chorus of 1,200. Organ. Grand orchestra of 150. Full military band, drum corps of the city militia, 50 anvils, 100 firemen, city fire bells and cannon to be fired from the stand of the leader by use of electricity. General Conductor, Mr. R. Herold. Organist, Gustav A. Scott. These concerts were among the grandest achievements of our time. The music of the musicians and singers was par excellence and should never be forgotten as long as history can keep it alive. How vividly is the scene before me--the magnificent chorus, the pealing of the organ tones, the excellent performance of the orchestra and the beautiful playing of Camilla Urso and the enwrapt listeners that crowded the old pavilion to overflowing. Those were days of music for Californians who knew how to make it and we should always have the greatest pride in recounting these magnificent efforts. In the year 1874, when Madam Anna Bishop was making her American tour, she included San Francisco, and with her troupe came also Alfred Wilkie, tenor, and Frank Gilder of New York, an organist and pianist of high repute. He was a genius in a class of his own. As the Salt Lake papers said of him, "Frank Gilder, who can snatch more music out of a piano than Beethoven could write in a week, is with the Lingard Company and will play a number of solos tonight. He is an entire orchestra, a sort of a condensed brass band, and those who don't hear him will never know what pianos were invented for." This was a unique "ad.", but was just about right. I was employed by him when he inaugurated his popular twenty-five-cent concerts. He gave thirty-six in the course and I sang twenty-five times for him. I sang one evening at one of Madam Bishop's concerts, and after he heard me sing Gatty's Fair Dove (my ghost song, as he called it) he planned out these concerts--something out of the ordinary. Each artist received ten dollars, no matter how high he stood in his calling, or the prices he received from other managers. That was the order of things and each one who sang must take that or not sing. We began in the hall of the Y.M.C.A. on Sutter street. The following artists appeared: Mrs. M.R. Blake, contralto; M.A. Anderson, tenor; Sig. C. Orlandini, baritone; Frank Gilder, pianist. The morning Chronicle had this to say in regard to the first concert: "FRANK GILDER'S POPULAR CONCERTS