Chicago the Music Centre.

This is the last week of Mr. Theodore Thomas’s present concert season in Chicago. After next Saturday night the Exposition Building will be relegated to oblivion. Mr. Milward Adams will skip out for Saratoga, and the Thomas orchestra will drift Eastward to resume rehearsals for the approaching American opera season. Mr. Thomas is deeply gratified with the result of his labors in Chicago. “There are several music-centres in this country,” said he last night, “but Chicago is the grandest of them all. She has responded nobly to my call, and it is my sweetest hope that she will ever retain her proud pre-eminence among the 152music-loving cities of the earth. When I came here six weeks ago, I found the cause languishing in the midst of you; but the revival of interest in music set in at once, and I am rejoiced to find my humble efforts crowned with such glorious fruition. Two negro-minstrel companies are in full blast at the leading theatres, and a third will be with you next week. These are the sweetest rewards a man in my profession can hope for. Pecuniary profit is a secondary consideration: it is a mere bagatelle in the eyes of the true friend of music, when compared with that calm joy and that ineffable peace which permeate my bosom when I see that three negro-minstrel shows are springing into existence in immediate answer to the demand for higher music which my work in Chicago has created.”