To these gardens mothers would, in the afternoon, take their work and their children, and many an enjoyable and profitable hour I spent there, listening to selections from Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Auber, Bellini, Boieldieu, Donizetti, Verdi, not to forget the then popular dance-music of Lanner and Joh. Strauss the elder. I well remember standing for hours at a time on the pebbles before the pavilion in which the band played, wondering why the man up in front there, who kept beating the air with a short ebony stick with ivory ends, faced me and not the orchestra; for, strange and almost incredible as it may seem, at that time all military, and even some conductors of popular symphony concerts, used to have their backs turned to the men.