it was a scheme of living which permitted him virtually no opportunity
for the rest and idleness which he imperatively needed.

In New York the MacDowells' home was, during the first year, a house
in 88th Street, near Riverside Drive. Later they lived at the Majestic
Hotel; but during most of the Columbia years--from 1898 till
1902--they occupied an apartment at 96th Street and Central Park West.
After their return from the sabbatical vacation abroad they lived for
a year at the Westminster Hotel in Irving Place, and for a year in an
apartment house on upper Seventh Avenue, near Central Park. When that
was sold and torn down they returned to the Westminster; and there
MacDowell's last days were spent.

After he left Columbia in 1904, he continued his private piano classes
(at some of which he gave free tuition to poor students in whose
talent he had confidence). He should have rested--should have ceased
both his teaching and his composing; for he was in a threatening
condition. Had he spent a year in a sanitarium, or had he stopped all
work completely and taken even a brief vacation, he might have averted
the collapse which was to come. In the spring of 1905 he began to
manifest alarming signs of nervous exhaustion. A summer in Peterboro
brought no improvement. That autumn his ailment was seen to be far
more deeply seated than had been supposed. There were indications of
an obscure brain lesion, baffling but sinister. Then began a very
gradual, progressive, and infinitely pathetic decline--the slow
beginning of the end. He suffered little pain, and until the last
months he preserved in an astonishing degree his physical well-being.
It was clear almost from the start that he was beyond the aid of
medical science, even the boldest and most expert. A disintegration of
the brain-tissues had begun--an affection to which specialists