examination in course I of the Department of Music was in progress in
the back room, the door of which opened at intervals as one pupil came
out and another went in. The examination was oral and private, and
when the door closed behind me Professor MacDowell, who was standing
at the open window, turned with a smile and motioned me toward a
chair. In a pedagogic sense it was not a regular examination. There
was something beautifully human in the way the professor turned the
traditional stiff and starched catechism into a delightfully informal
chat, in which the faburden, the Netherland School, early notation,
the great clavichord players, suites and sonatas, formed the main
topics. The questions were put in such an easy, charming way that I
forgot to be frightened; forgot everything but the man who walked
rapidly about the room with his hands in his pockets and his head
tipped slightly to one side; who talked animatedly and looked intently
at the floor; but the explanations and suggestions were meant for me.
When I tripped upon the beginning of notation for instruments, he
looked up quickly and said, 'Better look that up again; that's
important.'

"At the lectures Professor MacDowell's aim had been to emphasise those
things that had served to mark the bright spots in the growth and
advancement of music as an intelligible language. How well I recall my
impression on the occasion of my first visit to the lectures, and
afterwards! There was no evidence of an æsthetic side to the equipment
of the lecture room. At the end it was vast and glaringly white, and
except for an upright piano and a few chairs placed near the
lecturer's table the room was empty. Ten or twelve undergraduates,
youths of eighteen or twenty, and twenty or more special students and
auditors, chiefly women, were gathered here. The first lectures,
treating of the archaic beginnings of music, might have easily fallen