Ask the average workman along any artistic line what he would rather have than anything else and he is very sure to tell you, “Leisure for work!” And after that, the strongest desire is for the companionship of some one who really understands what he is trying to do.

His good angel must have led Edward MacDowell to Peterboro.  I can imagine no other setting so perfect for the last act of his life, with its shifting scenes.  Whatever else the great power back of the universe may be, He is the Master Artist, and in the making of this village of enchantment He seems to have gathered together all His most beautiful materials and combined them with lavish hand.  Quaint and picturesque houses are sprinkled over the foot-hills of the Monadnock Mountains.  Green fields go down to meet clear streams of placid water, where trailing vines and overhanging boughs make charming shadows.  The sun sparkles against great gray boulders, lichen-grown, and upon yellow sand dunes.  There are pines, larches, firs, spruces and all their sturdy kinspeople, scattered freely that the eye may at any season be gladdened by the sight of living green, and interspersed with these are deciduous trees of every kind, to make a fantastic tracery of bare branches against the wintry sky and furnish a series of beautiful contrasts, from the earliest tender bud to the last sere autumn leaf.  And the ferns!  Did the Great Artist have any left after planting the fence-corners, roadsides and deep woods of Peterboro?  Overarch these features with a fair dome of fleece-scattered blue and waft abroad throughout the place a succession of mountain breezes, ozone charged, and you have a place to live and work and grow young in.

MacDowell thought that the fine arts were supplemental, each of the other, and wished to include them all in his scheme, so well-built rustic studios, equipped to suit the needs of the occupant, are being placed at intervals on advantageous sites in the woods, tree-screened and far enough apart to insure quiet and privacy, but sufficiently near to give that comfortable sense of human comradeship and safety.  There is a common domicile at the foot of “Hill Crest,” called “The Lower House,” presided over by a capable housekeeper, where the workers sleep, breakfast, dine and recreate in the evening; but after breakfast, provided with a simple lunch, each hies away happily to his own studio to spend the day in alternate working and waiting on the Muses in blissful solitude.  This routine is broken sufficiently by cups of tea with Mrs. MacDowell at “Hill Crest,” rambles in garden and wood, drives over the picturesque mountain roads and tramps to the village, to prevent Jack from having any chance of becoming a dull boy.

The departed musician’s own log cabin, already referred to as the place where most of his later works were composed, was the first of the studios to be built, and it would be difficult to imagine a more perfect retreat for his purpose.