In his methods of work he was, like most composers of first-rate quality, at the mercy of his inspiration. He never composed at the piano, in the ordinary meaning of the phrase. That is to say, he never sat down to the piano with the idea that he wanted to compose a song or a piano piece. But sometime, when he might be improvising, as he was fond of doing when alone, a theme, an idea, might come to him, and almost before he knew it he had sketched something in a rudimentary form. He had a fancy that the technique of composition suffered as much as that of the piano if it was allowed to go for weeks and months without exercise. The constant work and excitement that his winters in Boston and New York involved, made it necessary for him to let days and weeks slip by with no creative work accomplished. Yet he always tried to write each day a few bars of music. Often in this way he evolved a theme for which he afterward found a use. In looking over a sketch-book in the summer he would run across something he liked, and the idea would expand into a matured work. His sketch-books are full of all kinds of random and fugitive material--half-finished fugues, canons, piano pieces, songs, single themes. Undoubtedly this habit of work had its value when he came to the leisurely months of summer; for he did not then have to go through a period of technical "warming up." There were many days when he did not write a note, but he always intended to, and usually did. When he was absorbed in a particular composition he kept at it, almost night and day, save for the hours he always tried to spend in the open air, and two hours in the evening when, no matter how late it might be, he sat quietly with his wife, reading or talking, smoking, and, in earlier days, enjoying a glass of beer and some food. His love of reading was a godsend to him when the waters were more than usually troubled and his brain was in a whirl. In the actual work of composition he was elaborately meticulous--not often to the extent of changing an original plan, but in minor details; he never ceased working on a score until the music was out of his hands, or entirely put aside. Sometimes he tried over a few measures on the piano as many as fifty times, changing the value or significance of a note; as a result, his piano writing is almost always "pianistic." In one respect he was sometimes careless: in the noting of the expression marks. By the time he arrived at that duty he was usually tired out. For this reason, much in his printed music is marked differently from the way he actually played it in concert. He never, in performance, changed a note, save in a few of the earlier pieces; but in details of expression he often departed widely from the printed directions.