he pianist frequently visited the Bok home. But it was
some time, even with these influences surrounding him, before music
began to play any real part in Bok's own life.

He attended the opera occasionally; more or less under protest, because
of its length, and because his mind was too practical for the indirect
operatic form. He could not remain patient at a recital; the effort to
listen to one performer for an hour and a half was too severe a tax
upon his restless nature. The Philadelphia Orchestra gave a symphony
concert each Saturday evening, and Bok dreaded the coming of that
evening in each week for fear of being taken to hear music which he was
convinced was "over his head."

Like many men of his practical nature, he had made up his mind on this
point without ever having heard such a concert. The word "symphony"
was enough; it conveyed to him a form of the highest music quite beyond
his comprehension. Then, too, in the back of his mind there was the
feeling that, while he was perfectly willing to offer the best that the
musical world afforded in his magazine, his readers were primarily
women, and the appeal of music, after all, he felt was largely, if not
wholly, to the feminine nature. It was very satisfying to him to hear
his wife play in the evening; but when it came to public concerts, they
were not for his masculine nature. In other words, Bok shared the all
too common masculine notion that music is for women and has little
place in the lives of men.

One day Josef Hofmann gave Bok an entirely new point of view. The
artist was rehearsing in Philadelphia for an appearance with the
orchestra, and the pianist was telling Bok and his wife of the desire
of Leopold Stokowski, who had recently become conductor of the
Philadelphia Orchestra, to eliminate encores from his symphonic
programmes; he wanted to begin the experiment with Hofmann's appearance
that week. This was a novel thought to Bok: why eliminate encores from
any concert? If he liked the way any performer played, he had always
done his share to secure an encore. Why should not the public have an
encore if it desired it, and why should a conductor or a performer
object? Hofmann explained to him the entity of a symphonic programme;
that it was made up with one composition in relation to the others as a
sympathetic unit, and that an encore was an intrusion, disturbing the
harmony of the whole.

"I wish you would let Stokowski come out and ex