marked: "This is the only correct passage in the exercise."

He once observed in a lecture that "Bach differed in almost everything
from Handel, except that he was born the same year and was killed by
the same doctor."

He was often sarcastic; but his was a sarcasm without sting or
rancour. Bitterness, indeed, was one of the few normal attributes
which he did not possess. Mr. Humiston tells of lunching with him
unexpectedly at a restaurant one day, just after his resignation from
Columbia had been accepted. "We sat over our coffee and cigars until
nearly four o'clock, and among other things he talked of that [the
Columbia matter]. There was not a word of bitterness or reproach
toward anyone, but rather a deep feeling of disappointment that his
plans and ideals for the training and welfare of young artists should
have been so completely defeated."

In his methods of work he was, like most composers of first-rate
quality, at the mercy of his inspiration. He never composed at the
piano, in the ordinary meaning of the phrase. That is to say, he never
sat down to the piano with the idea that he wanted to compose a song
or a piano piece. But sometime, when he might be improvising, as he
was fond of doing when alone, a theme, an idea, might come to him, and
almost before he knew it he had sketched something in a rudimentary
form. He had a fancy that the technique of composition suffered as
much as that of the piano if it was allowed to go for weeks and months
without exercise. The constant work and excitement that his winters in
Boston and New York involved, made it necessary for him to let days
and weeks slip by with no creative work accomplished. Yet he always
tried to write each day a few bars of music. Often in this way he