RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
Mr. M. E. Ingalls, Mr. and Mrs. L. A. Ault, Mrs. Charles Fleishmann, Mr. J. G. Schmidlapp and others.
For the first year we had three different directors, Mr. Seidl, Mr. Schradick and Mr. Van der Stücken, who came to Cincinnati and led two concerts each. Then we secured Mr. Van der Stücken as a permanent leader and he remained with the orchestra ten years.
I think I regretted the Cincinnati Orchestra Association more than anything else when we left for the Philippines, but I left it in good and well-trained hands. Mrs. C. R. Holmes, who succeeded me as President of the Association, had taken a great part in the original work of organisation and management, as had my sister-in-law, Mrs. Charles P. Taft, and others. Through their efforts the orchestra has been enlarged and improved and it is still a source of great pride and satisfaction to the city of Cincinnati. Mrs. Charles Taft is now the President and through her interest, activity and generosity it has been enabled to grow in ex- cellence.
Except for the orchestra, our life was tranquil; quite too settled, I thought, and filled with the usual homely incidents connected with housekeeping and the entertaining develop- ment of small children. My youngest child, Charles, was born in 1897, and my family was thus complete.
I come now to the years which we gave to the Philippine Islands and I must say that I wonder yet how our lot hap- pened to be so cast.
There had never been any unusual interest in our family as to the results of the Spanish-American War. Like most patriotic Americans we had been greatly excited while the war was in progress and had discussed its every phase and event with a warmth of approval, or disapproval, as the case might be, but it did not touch us directly, except as citizens,
any more than it touched the vast majority of the people of
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