on account of the low and uniform price of simple refreshments. This habit of ours must count considerably towards dispensing with the need of a public sale of refreshments. Moreover, a lunch carried from home can be consumed with much less disturbance than one that is served with plates; it is treated as a need rather than a diversion, and it will be much less of a hindrance in listening than when one sits formally at a table.

Before stating our conclusion, it may be well to consider a natural objection that will be raised to the use of orchestra: the cost or the difficulty of recruiting it. In reply it may be said that the supply of orchestral players has greatly increased in recent years in America, and the cost is correspondingly diminishing. Every year adds a new name to the list of cities that boast a symphony orchestra. Among the later ones are Seattle and Los Angeles. The winter engagement of a musician is a serious undertaking, for the player is under contract only for the active season of the year, and he must be paid a reasonable annual salary.

In summer the orchestral player, like most musicians, is idle. He can then be employed at more moderate terms than he could afford to take during the winter. The summer orchestra in America would thus have the benefit of the large number of players temporarily out of employment. Moreover, by engaging them during the summer the great cause of symphony concerts in the winter season would be effectively advanced.

The individual members of an orchestra are usually solo players. A certain number of solo performances could be agreed upon in the terms of engagement; this would greatly add to the charm and value of the concert.

Singers could be employed at comparatively small expense. It might be well to try the English plan of engaging less well-known singers for ballads rather than for the extended aria-instead of giving way to the unfortunate rage for "stars" that prevails in America.

It is necessary to provide a building of some kind protected from the weather. An excellent provision is a large auditorium, merely roofed over, with a semicircular covered stage for the players. The absence of a restaurant from the immediate neighborhood of the concert will leave a much larger seating capacity. At a sufficient distance a restaurant could be established where the diners

might enjoy the distant sounds without disturbing the enjoyment of the actual listeners. It would not be necessary to prohibit eating in the seats of the auditorium, and smoking might be permitted where there are no walls.1

In the Queen's Hall concerts, in London, the practice is successfully maintained (indoors) of allowing smoking in all parts of the house.

THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN CLUB

BY CHARLES E. FAY,

Professor of Modern Languages, Tufts College, Massachusetts.

The founding of the Appalachian Mountain Club at Boston in January, 1876, may be regarded as the first successful beginning in America of an associated movement towards the promotion of a fondness for nature on the larger scale, and particularly as expressed in the mountain as a field for sport and means of spiritual uplift. Other societies have indeed preceded it: the little Alpine Club, at Williamstown, Mass., in 1863, composed of a coterie of the college. community of that place, who, invited primarily by the neighboring Mount Greylock, passed on to pioneer investigations in the mountains of New Hampshire; the similar group of friends in Portland, Me., who, lured by the peaks lying blue on their northwestern horizon, associated themselves in 1873 under the name of the White Mountain Club; and a third, short-lived society, in a region of greater natural possibilities-the Rocky Mountain Club (1875) of Denver, Col. The first two, by reason of their limited and purely social nature, and the western club, by reason, doubtless, of the more pioneer type of civilization which accords less room and leisure for recreation, were fated to a brief existence and passed with the dissociation of the groups creating them.

Every circumstance of time, place and character of the initiators of the movement conspired to favor the establishment of a strong, useful and permanent organization when the Appalachian Mountain Club was founded. The troubles of the Civil War were over and the country was in a current of commercial prosperity, typified in the Centennial Exposition, even then being installed at Philadelphia. The nation was emerging from a narrow provincialism, and wider, more cosmopolitan views were being fostered by an increasing foreign travel-always a stimulus to an enlarged appreciation of natural scenery. Knowledge of the existence and work of the "Alpine Club" par excellence, founded in London in 1857, and of the continental alpine and tourist clubs based more or less upon its model,

was becoming familiar on this side of the ocean. Nowhere, perhaps, more than in Boston were the conditions favorable for the starting of a similar movement, by reason of its older and at that time more homogeneous civilization, its less strenuous and absorbing commercial spirit, and the presence here of a coterie of the pupils of the great naturalist and early student of glaciers, Louis Agassiz, several of whom were active participants in the organization of the Appalachian Mountain Club.

The call to those interested was issued by Edward C. Pickering, then professor of physics in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but shortly after appointed director of the Harvard College. Observatory. Other members of the faculty of the Institute-T. Sterry Hunt, Niles, Cross, Lanza and the younger Henck-were likewise present at that initial meeting. Most active of all in the work of organization was Samuel H. Scudder, then a leader in American. entomology. Edward S. Morse, of Salem, and Charles H. Hitchcock, of Dartmouth College, then state geologist of New Hampshire, were also present and later rendered service on the early boards of officers. The club organized with Pickering for president, Scudder for vice-president, and Henck as secretary. Hunt, Hitchcock, Count Pourtalès, Nowell and Fay were the other members of its first council.

The dominant character of the scientific element stands out in this roll-call. Indeed there had been a strong expression of the feeling that the times were ripe for the formation of a New England geographical society, and a plea was made that this be the outcome of the meeting. Wiser councils prevailed, for we should then have had simply one more learned society, leading a cold and possibly precarious existence, instead of a vigorous, full-blooded, ardent club, whose growth has never been retarded, whose imission has constantly broadened, and which has served as the prototype to other similar societies in distant parts of the United States. Though the club has always been democratic in the fullest sense of the term, it should not perhaps be lost sight of that the social standing of a considerable fraction of both sexes of those interested in its foundation was a factor in its immediate success, most effectively calling attention to the high character of this movement for an entirely novel association.

As stated in its by-laws, the objects of the club at its inception were "to explore the mountains of New England and the adjacent

regions, both for scientific and artistic purposes, and in general to cultivate an interest in geographical studies." In this last phrase we may see a concession to the party referred to above. A complete statement is set forth in the paragraph introductory to the first issue of its periodical, "Appalachia," which appeared under the editorship of Mr. Scudder in June, 1876, the club being then but six months old. Somewhat more condensed it appears in the preface of the first annual Register (that for 1880), where we read:

"It aims to serve a threefold purpose. First, to combine the energies of all who are interested to render our mountain resorts more attractive by building paths, camps and other conveniences, by constructing and publishing accurate maps, and by collecting all available information concerning the mountain region. Second, to collect and make available the results of scattered scientific observations of all kinds, which, though of little value each by itself, yet when brought together may be of great use. Third, in the accomplishment of these ends to be a source of pleasure and profit to its members, by affording a ground on which they may meet to compare notes and to interchange ideas on subjects in which all are interested. As means to these ends the club holds monthly meetings in Boston during the winter, occasional field meetings during the summer, and an annual art exhibition; and, incidentally, organizes excursions to accessible points of interest."

A perfect form of organization was adopted for the furtherance of these clearly outlined ends. Besides the usual executive officers, provision was made for five councillors, representing severally natural history, topography, art, exploration, and improvements, who, jointly with the other officers, founded the council, the administrative body of the society. With a special officer to foster and guard its interests, no department of the club has declined in vigor in the third of a century since its organization, excepting as very strenuous effort has diminished the field for present and future activity, as notably in exploration. It seems to-day hardly credible that in 1876 the heart of the White Mountains was known only to a few timber surveyors, where now frequent companies of joyous campers pass and repass every summer; so completely has the work of this department been done.

All that the club promised at its inception it has fulfilled: the paths and camps are there and known to hundreds of both sexes; the maps exist to-day, either issued by the club itself, or rendered accessible and popularized from the results of Government surveys: