In Cincinnati's Zoo

The monkeys at the Cincinnati Zoo were in a state of great delight last week. They capered all over their little island, jibbering excitedly. Peanuts were coming their way thick & fast. People were flocking nightly to the nearby opera pavilion, though in the spring it had been clearly announced that there could be no Zoo Opera this year (TIME, April 18).

Seventeen years ago when Cincinnati's Zoological Gardens were in peril of closing, two wealthy women came forward and saved them. Cincinnati Traction Co., owner of the property, threatened to break it up, sell it as building lots. Mrs. Charles Phelps Taft, wife of the publishing half-brother of William Howard Taft, gave $125,000 to prevent the split-up. Another $125,000 was given by Mrs. Mary Emery whose father-in-law, Thomas Emery, made one of the first big real estate fortunes in Cincinnati, increased it by manufacturing lard oil and candles.

For years after the Zoo Opera was founded, Mrs. Taft and Mrs. Emery made themselves responsible for the annual deficit. Both died, but last season when popular subscriptions failed to cover the losses, the Taft estate made up this difference. This year people were saying that it was the Emerys' turn and the challenge was taken up by young Mrs. John Josiah Emery, Artist Charles Dana Gibson's daughter who married old Mrs. Mary Emery's nephew. In April when the opera announced that it would have to disband, young Mrs. Emery at once started a campaign for funds, quickly raised the $20,000 necessary to see this season through.

The latest civic-minded Emery was in Europe last week so she did not see the enthusiastic people milling into the Zoo each night at dusk. She did not hear the ovation which greeted short, stocky Isaac Van Grove when he took the conductor's stand at the opening Aida. Nor did she read his statement: "When I came to Cincinnati this time I felt as though I were coming to a shrine. I could understand the emotion of the Mohammedan who makes once in his lifetime a pilgrimage to Mecca. . . ."

Aida and Martha were given throughout the first of the Zoo's ten-week season.

In Aida, Frederick Jagel, Metropolitan Opera tenor, made his Cincinnati debut and when his first aria rang far out over the Zoo grounds the wisest of the monkeys knew that another season was safely under way, scratched their whiskers eagerly for the intermission peanut feast.

In Manhattan, on the Mall not far from the Central Park monkeys, summer crowds gathered last week for the first of the band concerts which Mrs. Daniel Guggenheim gives free in memory of her mining husband. The bandsmen all had new dark blue uniforms with G on their brass buttons, their lapels, their caps. The G did not stand for their patroness' name but for Bandmaster Edwin Franko Goldman, who has conducted free Guggenheim concerts for 14 summers.

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