It is a beautiful conception, the big, tall man contemplating thus reverently, with bared head, the tender epitome of life. The dog, with head upraised, points a comprehending nose in the direction of his poet-master's find, and looks as if he longed to help him unravel the mystery. MacDowell would adore this piece of sculpture, for he sought the secret of life in flower and brook and landscape, in mountain and vale and sea. Gilman compares the "Sea Pieces" to Walt Whitman and Swinburne. Like Whitman, MacDowell is no strict adherent to set forms, placing inspiration ahead of tradition. Some of his most beautiful compositions are very brief. Poe claims that there is no such thing in existence as a "long poem." Since a poem only deserves the name in proportion to its power to excite and elevate the soul, and a sustained condition of soul excitement and elevation is a psychic impossibility, the oft-used phrase is a contradiction in terms. Applying this idea to the familiar piano compositions of MacDowell, they have every right to be called "tone poems." Poetry is the color-work of the mind, as distinguished from its sculpture and architecture, which represent mere form. There is more than form in the compositions under consideration; the tinge of color is everywhere, the wave of poetry that produces soul excitement and elevation, from signature to final chord. While he handles a subject broadly, as an impressionist, accomplishing striking effects with a few bold, characteristic strokes, MacDowell still works out his tone picture with considerable detail, carefully indicating the results he wishes to achieve. He reminds one in his methods of Corot, the great landscape painter. He will tell you to play a passage "very tenderly," or "somewhat savagely," or "daintily and joyously," not being content with the usual color terms. When he is loud, he is very, very loud, and in the same composition will have a passage marked with four p's. He likes contrasts and uses them very effectively. His music has the charm of infinite variety, but there is an insistent note of sombreness pervading most of it that is heard even above the majesty of the "Sea Pieces," the beauty of the "Woodland Sketches" and the humor of the "Marionettes." In the "New England Idyls" there is a plaintive little wail, "From a Log Cabin," the rustic retreat in the woods at Peterboro, his "house of dreams untold," where MacDowell did most of his later composition. It speaks of solitude, isolation and a moan of the wind is heard in the tree tops, with an answering moan from the heart of a man who may have had some premonition of his fate.