birds, flowers, trees, meadows or sea into tone. Whenever he "loafed
and invited his soul," the tired, city-worn world reaped the benefit.
His lesser piano compositions may be, in a sense, considered in the
light of a diary. We are with him in a fisherman's hut, in deep woods,
on a deserted farm, in the haunted house, by the lily pond, in
mid-ocean, by a meadow brook, by smoldering embers, always seeing the
picture, hearing the voices or feeling the atmosphere that appealed to
his artist mind. The charm of common things, the ever-present beauty
and harmony in all forms of life, supplied him with endless
inspiration.

In portraying nature, he is in no sense a copyist. He does not
describe a scene, an occasion or an object, but suggests it, being an
adept in the use of musical metaphor. Robert Louis Stevenson says that
the one art in literature is to omit. "If I knew how to omit," says
he, "I should ask no other knowledge." Painters tell us that the
highest evidence of skill in transferring nature to canvas is to avoid
too much detail, and they squint up their eyes in order not to see too
much. These standards prove MacDowell the artist. He does not make the
mistake that so many preachers and public teachers do of presuming
upon the ignorance or stupidity of his hearers, but leaves something
to their imagination and inner artistic senses.

There is a reverence of nature, a depth of love that amounts almost to
sadness, in this man's work that stamps him the pantheist in the
highest sense. This is, I think, a common characteristic of the
mystic. Their consciousness of the oneness of all life is so perfect
that God is seen even in its lowest forms. Sermons are read in stones
and books in the running brooks. This suggests MacDowell's kinship to
Shakespeare, Ruskin, Emerson and Thoreau; but it is a limitless