MacDowell is very happy and his wife is braver than Nietzsche's sister. One fragment of his conversation I recall. With glowing countenance he spoke of the thunderbolt in his wonderfully realistic piano poem, The Eagle. There had been a lightning-storm during the afternoon. Then he told me how he had found water by means of the hazel wand on his New Hampshire farm--a real happening. As I went away I could not help remembering that the final words I should ever hear uttered by this friend were of bright fire and running water and dream-music. [The above appeared in the New York _Herald_, June 24, 1906, and is reprinted by request. Edward MacDowell died January 23, 1908.] CHAPTER III REMY DE GOURMONT HIS IDEAS. THE COLOUR OF HIS MIND "Je dis ce que je pense"--R. DE G. I Those were days marked by a white stone when arrived in the familiar yellow cover a new book, with card enclosed from "Remy de Gourmont, 71, rue des Saints-Pères, Paris." Sometimes I received as many as two in a year. But they always found me eager and grateful, did those precious little volumes bearing the imprint of the _Mercure de France_, with whose history the name of De Gourmont is so happily linked. And there were post-cards too in his delicate handwriting on which were traced sense and sentiment; yes, this man of genius possessed sentiment, but abhorred sentimentality. His personal charm transpired in a friendly salutation hastily pencilled. He played exquisitely upon his intellectual instrument, and knew the value of time and space. So his post-cards are souvenirs of his courtesy, and it was through one, which unexpectedly fell from the sky in 1897, I began my friendship with this distinguished French critic. His sudden death in 1915 at Paris (he was born 1858), caused by apoplexy, was the heroic ending of a man of letters. Like Flaubert he was stricken while at his desk. I can conceive no more fitting end for a valiant soldier of literature. He was a moral hero and the victim of his prolonged technical heroism.