its singular mobility and often sweetness of expression, the bright, vital eyes, set wide apart, the abundant (though not long), dark hair tinged with grey, the white skin, the sensitive mouth, rather large and full-lipped, the strong jaws, the sturdy and athletic build,—­he was somewhat above medium height, with broad shoulders, powerful arms, and large, muscular, finely shaped hands,—­his general air of physical soundness and vigour:  all these combined to form an outer personality that was strongly attractive.  His movements were quick and decisive.  To strangers, even when he felt at ease, his manner was diffident, yet of an indescribable, almost childlike, simplicity and charm.  His voice in speaking was low-pitched and subdued, like his laugh; in conversation, when he was entirely himself, he could be brilliantly effective and witty, and his mirth-loving propensities were irrepressible.

His sense of humour, which was of true Celtic richness, was fluent and inexhaustible.  To an admirer who had affirmed in print that certain imaginative felicities in some of the verse which he wrote for his songs recalled at moments the phrasing of Whitman and Shakespeare, he wrote: 

“I will confide in you that if, in the next world, I should happen upon the wraiths of Shakespeare, Whitman, and Co., I would light out without delay.  Good heavens!  I blush at the thought of it!  A header through a cloud would be the only thing.—­Seriously, I was deeply touched by your praise and wish I were more worthy.”

His pupil and friend, Mr. W.H.  Humiston, recalls that, in going over MacDowell’s sketchbooks and manuscripts after his death, he found that many of the manuscripts had been rewritten several times:  “I would find a movement begun and continued for half a page, then it would be broken off suddenly, and a remark like this written at the end:—­’Hand organ to the rescue!’”

I told him once that I had first heard his “To a Wild Rose” played by a high-school girl, on a high-school piano, at a high-school graduation festivity.  “Well,” he remarked, with his sudden illumination, “I suppose she pulled it up by the roots!” Some one sent him at about this time, relates Mr. Humiston, a programme of an organ recital which contained this same “Wild Rose” piece.  “He was not pleased with the idea, having in mind the expressionless organ of a dozen years ago when only a small portion of most organs was enclosed in a swell-box.  Doubtless thinking also of a style of organ performance which plays Schumann’s Traeumerei on the great organ diapasons, he said it made him think of a hippopotamus wearing a clover leaf in his mouth.”

A member of one of his classes at Columbia, finding some unoccupied space on the page of his book after finishing his exercise, filled up the space with rests, at the end of which he placed a double bar.  When his book was returned the page was covered with corrections—­all except these bars of rests, which were enclosed in a red line and marked:  “This is the only correct passage in the exercise.”