Number of Amount Extra Season Concerts Total Guarantors Collected Deficit 1900-01 6 $15,720 120 $13,299 (84%) $40,000 1901-02 14 pairs 32,000 43 32,000 30,000 1902-03 14 ” 38,000 113 38,000 16,000 1903-04 14 ” 42,000 137 42,000 5,300 1904-05 15 ” 48,000 259 48,000 1905-06 18 ” 50,000 315 47,000 (95%) 1906-07 20 ” 46,840 281 41,900 (90%) 1907-08 22 ” 42,285 273 40,100 (95%) 1908-09 22 ” 45,125 352 42,800 (95%) 1909-10 22 44,800 359 44,800 1910-11 25 42,400 311 42,400 1911-12 25 42,100 309 42,100 1912-13 25 43,200 314 43,200 1913-14 25 46,000 335 46,000 1914-15 25 45,300 323 45,300 1915-16 25 49,100 310 49,100 -------- Total $618,699 During these distressing days Scheel was asked to dine at the Rittenhouse Club to meet some prominent men of affairs, at a time when desperate efforts were being made to procure guarantors. The hour arrived, but no Scheel and it was learned that he had not gone home to dress. His friends started out to find him, and he was discovered teaching the second bassoon player to play a syncopated passage in a Tschaikowsky symphony. The dinner was entirely forgotten in the absorption of the lesson, but he rushed home to dress and arrived only thirty minutes late. The result of the dinner, however, was an addition of several thousand dollars to the Guarantee Fund. The total number of guarantors who defrayed the annual deficit during sixteen years was about seven hundred and fifty, and to them Philadelphia music lovers are deeply in debt. Many sighs of relief were heard when this unstable way of financing an orchestra was ended by the offer of the “Unknown Donor,” which made possible a more permanent method. CHAPTER VI THE DEATH OF FRITZ SCHEEL