aking her American tour,
she included San Francisco, and with her troupe came also Alfred
Wilkie, tenor, and Frank Gilder of New York, an organist and pianist
of high repute. He was a genius in a class of his own. As the Salt
Lake papers said of him, "Frank Gilder, who can snatch more music out
of a piano than Beethoven could write in a week, is with the Lingard
Company and will play a number of solos tonight. He is an entire
orchestra, a sort of a condensed brass band, and those who don't hear
him will never know what pianos were invented for." This was a unique
"ad.", but was just about right. I was employed by him when he
inaugurated his popular twenty-five-cent concerts. He gave thirty-six
in the course and I sang twenty-five times for him. I sang one evening
at one of Madam Bishop's concerts, and after he heard me sing Gatty's
Fair Dove (my ghost song, as he called it) he planned out these
concerts--something out of the ordinary. Each artist received ten
dollars, no matter how high he stood in his calling, or the prices he
received from other managers. That was the order of things and each
one who sang must take that or not sing. We began in the hall of the
Y.M.C.A. on Sutter street. The following artists appeared: Mrs. M.R.
Blake, contralto; M.A. Anderson, tenor; Sig. C. Orlandini, baritone;
Frank Gilder, pianist.

The morning Chronicle had this to say in regard to the first concert:

"FRANK GILDER'S POPULAR CONCERTS

"The first of the series was given in the presence of a large and
fashionable audience. The music was first-class in every respect and
nearly every piece was encored. Gilder's Galop de Concert and
Orlandini's Largo al Factotum most emphatically so. Mrs. Blake
distinguished herself as an accomplished vocalist in Millard's song,
When the Tide Comes In, and in the favorite old Scotch ballad, John
Anderson, My Joe. It was supposed from the low price that these
concerts would be beneath the notice of the high toned dilettanti of
the city, but the performance last evening has completely disabused
not only the nicely-critical, but the public generally of this idea.
The series is to be continued. The second in the course will be given
on Tuesday eve of next week."

[Illustration: Mme. Anna Bishop, beloved instructor of Mrs.
Blake-Alverson and with whom she sang in many concerts.]

The second concert on Tuesday was given with Madam Anna Bishop, Mrs.
M.R. Blake; Cornelius Makin, bass; Prof. von der Mehde