resigned to
the idea and satisfied with the reason therefor.

But the bewildered Bok could not make out exactly what had happened to
his preconceived notion about symphonic music. He attended the
following Saturday evening concert; listened to a Brahms symphony that
pleased him even more than had "The New World," and when, two weeks
later, he heard the Tschaikowski "Pathetique" and later the
"Unfinished" symphony, by Schubert, and a Beethoven symphony, attracted
by each in turn, he realized that his prejudice against the whole
question of symphonic music had been both wrongly conceived and
baseless.

He now began to see the possibility of a whole world of beauty which up
to that time had been closed to him, and he made up his mind that he
would enter it. Somehow or other, he found the appeal of music did not
confine itself to women; it seemed to have a message for men. Then,
too, instead of dreading the approach of Saturday evenings, he was
looking forward to them, and invariably so arranged his engagements
that they might not interfere with his attendance at the orchestra
concerts.

After a busy week, he discovered that nothing he had ever experienced
served to quiet him so much as these end-of-the-week concerts. They
were not too long, an hour and a half at the utmost; and, above all,
except now and then, when the conductor would take a flight into the
world of Bach, he found he followed him with at least a moderate degree
of intelligence; certainly with personal pleasure and inner
satisfaction.

Bok concluded he would not read the articles he had published on the
meaning of the different "sections" of a symphony orchestra, or the
books issued on that subject. He would try to solve the mechanism of
an orchestra for himself, and ascertain as he went along the relation
that each portion bore to the other. When, therefore, in 1913, the
president of the Philadelphia Orchestra Association asked him to become
a member of its Board of Directors, his acceptance was a natural step
in the gradual development of his interest in orchestral music.

The public support given to orchestras now greatly interested Bok. He
was surprised to find that every symphony orchestra had a yearly
deficit. This he immediately attributed to faulty management; but on
investigating the whole question he learned that a symphony orchestra
could not possibly operate, at a profit or even on a self-sustaining
basis, because of its weekly c