Read over the D-flat major section of "An Old Love Story." Throughout MacDowell's previous work one will find no passage quite like it in contour and emotion.

It is quieter, more ripely poised, than anything in his earlier manner that I can recall.

"Of Br'er Rabbit," "From a German Forest," "Of Salamanders," and "A Haunted House," are in his familiar vein; but again the new note is sounded in the concluding number of the book, "By Smouldering Embers." In the "New England Idyls," the point is still more evident.

One passes over "From an Old Garden" and "Midsummer" as belonging fundamentally to the period of the "Woodland Sketches" and "Sea Pieces." But one halts at "Mid-Winter," No.

3 of the collection; with those fifteen bars in E-flat major in the middle section, one enters upon unfamiliar ground in the various and delectable region of MacDowell's fantasy.