But while the Board of Directors was in a continuous state of anxiety about the expenses; and the guarantors were being kept up to the mark; and the three Women’s Committees then in existence were straining every nerve to help; and the orchestra was constantly improving through the untiring efforts of the conductor, all was not well with Fritz Scheel. In looking back over his term of leadership of the Philadelphia Orchestra, his friends realize now that his illness began at least one year, and perhaps more, before the final breakdown came. He became irascible with his players, erratic in conduct, and his good judgment in matters musical seemed to forsake him. During the first months of 1907 his programmes had to be constantly supervised to guard against excessive severity; and on one occasion he had to be restrained from playing five symphonies at one concert. The first knowledge the public had that he was in a peculiar mental condition was at a concert of the Eurydice Chorus, held in Horticultural Hall on February 6, 1907. He had been much upset by the death of a violinist in the orchestra, who disappeared and was found drowned. During the concert he asked the audience to rise and then played a funeral march in memory of this man. He constantly talked to the audience and to the singers. It was immediately seen that he was not responsible for his actions, and a specialist was consulted. He was taken to Atlantic City for a week, but did not improve. The news of Scheel’s illness brought forth universal expressions of regret, as witness the following: March 3, 1907. “FRITZ SCHEEL” “Fritz Scheel’s illness is not only a personal tragedy; it is a public calamity. The fine orchestra which he has created for Philadelphia, and into which he has poured to exhaustion his own nervous energy, remains the pliant instrument he made it, ready to the hand of whatever master may be found to carry on his work, if he should not return to it. But the orchestra has been so peculiarly the expression of Scheel’s artistic personality, that his withdrawal at the end of what had been a most prosperous and buoyant season leaves the great constituency built up for it in these seven years with a sense of bereavement and depression. “Mr. Scheel is a remarkable instance of a concentrated musical temperament, that views all life and thought through its own medium alone. In the years that he has spent in Philadelphia, he has been scarcely known beyond the immediate circle of the orchestra and the musical societies that he has directed.” * * * * *