The "Marionettes" of op. 38 are in a wholly different case. Published first in 1888, the year of MacDowell's return to America, they were afterward extensively revised, and now appear under a radically different guise. In its present form, the group comprises six _genre_ studies--"Soubrette," "Lover," "Witch," "Clown," "Villain," "Sweetheart"--besides two additions: a "Prologue" and "Epilogue." Here MacDowell is in one of his happiest moods. It was a fortunate and charming conceit which prompted the plan of the series, with its half-playful, half-ironic, yet lurkingly poetic suggestions; for in spite of the mood of bantering gaiety which placed the pieces in such mocking juxtaposition, there is, throughout, an undertone of grave and meditative tenderness which it is one of the peculiar properties of MacDowell's art to communicate and enforce. This is continually apparent in "The Lover" and "Sweetheart," fugitively so in the "Prologue," and, in an irresistible degree, in the exceedingly poetic and deeply felt "Epilogue"--one of the most typical and beautiful of MacDowell's smaller works. The music of these pieces is, as with other of his earlier works that he has since revised, confusing to the observer who attempts to place it among his productions in the order suggested by its opus number. For although in the list of his published works the "Marionettes" follow immediately on the heels of the Concert Study and "Les Orientales" the form in which they are now most generally known represents the much later period of the "Keltic" sonata--a fact which will, however, be sufficiently evident to anyone who studies the two versions carefully enough to perceive the difference between more or less experimental craftsmanship and ripe and heedful artistry. The observer will notice in these pieces, incidentally, the abandonment of the traditional Italian terms of expression and the substitution of English words and phrases, which are used freely and with adroitness to indicate every shade of the composer's meaning. In place of the stereotyped terms of the music-maker's familiarly limited vocabulary, we have such a system of direct and elastic expression as Schumann adopted. Thus one finds, in the "Prologue," such unmistakable and illuminating directions as: "with sturdy good humour," "pleadingly," "mockingly"; in the "Soubrette"--"poutingly"; in the "Lover"--in the "Villain"--"with sinister emphasis," "sardonically." This method, which MacDowell has followed consistently in all his later works, has obvious advantages; and it becomes in his hands a picturesque and stimulating means for the conveyance of his intentions. Its defect, equally obvious, is that it is not, like the conventional Italian terminology, universally intelligible.