effect. Chopin's pen always stopped when his thoughts stopped, and he
never appends a meaningless end formula as if to warn the audience
that they may now put on their hats. On the contrary, some of his
later compositions, especially of the last period, end with exquisite
miniature poems, connected in spirit with the preceding music and yet
distinct--separate inspirations. I refer, especially, to the endings
of his last two nocturnes and to the final bars of the mazurka, opus
59, No. 3.

George Sand has given us a vivid sketch of Chopin's conscientiousness
as a composer. "He shut himself up in his room for entire days," she
says, "weeping, walking about, breaking his pen, repeating and
changing a bar a hundred times, and beginning again next day with
minute and desperate perseverance. He spent six weeks over a single
page, only to go back and write that which he had traced at the first
essay." As regards his creativeness, George Sand says that "it
descended upon his piano suddenly, completely, sublimely, or it sang
itself in his head during his walks, and he made haste to hear it by
rushing to the instrument." I have already mentioned the fact that
when he wrote his last mazurka he was too weak to try it on the piano.
In one of his letters he speaks of a polonaise being ready in his
head. These facts indicate that he composed mentally, although, no
doubt, during the improvisations, many themes occurred to him which he
remembered and utilized. When he improvised he did not watch the
key-board, but generally looked at the ceiling. Already as a youth he
used to be so absorbed that he forgot his meals; and, in the street,
he was often so absent-minded that he very narrowly escaped being run
over by a wagon. Visions of female loveliness and patriotic
reminiscences inspired many of his best works. Sometimes the pictures
in his mind became so vivid as to form real hallucinations. Thus it