ome now to the final volumes in the series of what one may as well
call pianistic "nature-studies": the "Fireside Tales" (op. 61) and
"New England Idyls" (op. 62), which, together with the songs of op.
60, constitute the last of his published works (they were all issued
in 1902). In these last piano pieces there is a new quality, an
unaccustomed accent. One notes it on the first page of the opening
number of the "Fireside Tales," "An Old Love Story," where the voice
of the composer seems to have taken on an unfamiliar _timbre_. There
is here a turn of phrase, a quality of sentiment, which are notably
fresh and strange. There is in this, and in "By Smouldering Embers," a
graver tenderness, a more pervasive sobriety, than he had revealed
before. Read over the D-flat major section of "An Old Love Story."
Throughout MacDowell's previous work one will find no passage quite
like it in contour and emotion. It is quieter, more ripely poised,
than anything in his earlier manner that I can recall. "Of Br'er
Rabbit," "From a German Forest," "Of Salamanders," and "A Haunted
House," are in his familiar vein; but again the new note is sounded in
the concluding number of the book, "By Smouldering Embers."

In the "New England Idyls," the point is still more evident. One
passes over "From an Old Garden" and "Midsummer" as belonging
fundamentally to the period of the "Woodland Sketches" and "Sea
Pieces." But one halts at "Mid-Winter," No. 3 of the collection; with
those fifteen bars in E-flat major in the middle section, one enters
upon unfamiliar ground in the various and delectable region of
MacDowell's fantasy. So in the succeeding piece, "With Sweet
Lavender": he had not given us in any of his former writing a theme
similar in quality to the one with which he begins the thirteenth bar.
"In Deep Woods" is less unusual--is, in fact, strongly suggestive, in
harmonic colour, of the shining sonorities of the "Wandering Iceberg"
study in the "Sea Pieces." The "Indian Idyl," "To an Old White Pine,"
and "From Puritan Days" are also contrived in the familiar idiom of
the earlier volumes, though they are unfailingly resourceful in
invention and imaginative vigour. In "From a Log Cabin," though, we
come upon as surprising a thing as MacDowell's art had yielded us
since the appearance of the "Woodland Sketches." I doubt if, in the
entire body of his writing, one will find a lovelier, a more intimate
utterance. It bears as a motto the words--str