3. _Of Salamanders (As delicately as possible)._ This is a fanciful, intricate piece, but very delicate in effect. It is technically difficult to play, requiring an absolute control of finger work. It was rather a favourite with the composer. 4. _A Haunted House (Mysteriously)._ This is one of the most imaginative and realistic of MacDowell's smaller pianoforte pieces. It opens _very dark and sombre_, developing into a wild and eerie _fortissimo_. The middle section requires swiftness of finger work to suggest the nervous expectancy aroused by the preceding mysteriousness. The ghost-like effect returns, then gradually recedes again into impenetrable gloom. 6. _By Smouldering Embers (Musingly)._ This opens with a quiet, tender theme after the style of _An Old Love Story_. The piece is quite short, but displays a mastery both of harmony and counterpoint. The music is grave and deep, but very tender. The little middle section stands out in its almost passionate, but sonorous and controlled emotion. Toward the end, the music becomes very moving and subdued, dying away with careful and sensitive tone reduction. The impression left by this piece, and by the _Fireside Tales_ as a whole, is that the composer was conscious of a heavy responsibility in his work; that he felt, as Elgar has explained, that "the creative artist suffers in creating, or in contemplating the unending influence of his creation ... for even the highest ecstacy of 'Making' is mixed with the consciousness of the sombre dignity of the eternity of the artist's responsibility." OPUS 62. NEW ENGLAND IDYLS, FOR PIANOFORTE. _First Published_, 1902 (Arthur P. Schmidt). 1. _An Old Garden_. 2. _Mid-Summer_. 3. _Mid-Winter_. 4. _With Sweet Lavender_. 5. _In Deep Woods_. 6. _Indian Idyl_. 7. _To an Old White Pine_. 8. _From Puritan Days_. 9. _From a Log Cabin_. 10. _The Joy of Autumn_.