h 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 h