When a mere stripling of nineteen, he [Johann Strauss] contrived to get together a scratch orchestra of young players who had sufficient faith in his talent and energy to elect him their leader, and started from Vienna upon a concert-tour through Transylvania and Roumania. The slender fund with which this joyous company set out on its wild expedition was soon exhausted, and at Fancsova, a small town in the Lower Banat (situate on the left bank of the Danube and famous, of late years, for the excellence of its beer), Strauss and his merry men found themselves one fine morning without a kreuzer in their collective pockets. What was to be done? The band performed a serenade under the mayor's bedroom windows, and its leader succeeded in borrowing from that functionary a sum sufficient to purchase the immediate necessaries of life, but only on condition that the loan should be repaid out of the proceeds of certain concerts to be given in Pancsova itself.