At the end of the second year an assistant was appointed—­a gentleman who had been a student in the department.  To him were entrusted the classes in rudimentary harmony, dictation, and chord-analysis:  and to this extent he relieved MacDowell until the latter had his sabbatical vacation in 1902-03; he then took over the classes in strict counterpoint; but all the more advanced courses were discontinued until MacDowell’s return.  Even with an assistant, however, MacDowell found his labours very far from being light.  In his third year (1898-99) he still gave five courses of two hours a week each, with the exception of a single one-hour course.  For these no less than eighty-six students were registered; and in the following year, fifty-two students were registered in one of the courses.  In 1901-02 he gave six courses:  a general course in musical culture, for which he had thirty-seven students; an advanced course in musical culture, for which he had fourteen students; a course in counterpoint, twelve students; in orchestration, twelve students; in practical composition, thirteen students; in free compositions, two students.  This continued to be, in general, his work until he resigned in 1904.  To these labours he added the appalling drudgery of correcting examination books and exercises—­a task which he performed with unflagging patience and invariable thoroughness.  Some of his friends remember seeing him at this particular labour, and they recall “the weary, tired, though interested face; the patient trying-over and annotating.”  In addition to his regular duties, he devoted every Sunday morning to receiving students in the more advanced courses who were invited to come to him for help in their composition and piano work.  He was, as his friend Hamlin Garland has said, “temperate in all things but work—­in that he was hopelessly prodigal.”

These facts are worth stating in detail; for it has been said that MacDowell had no drudgery to perform at Columbia; that he had few students, and that the burden of the teaching work was borne by his assistant.  The impression has gone abroad that he had little didactic capacity, that he was disinclined toward and disqualified for methodical work.  It cannot, of course, be said that his inclinations tended irresistibly toward pedagogy, or that he loved routine.  Yet that he had uncommon gifts as a teacher, that he was singularly methodical in his manner of work, are facts that are beyond question.  His students have testified to the strikingly suggestive and illuminating manner in which his instruction was imparted.  His lectures, which he wrote out in full, are remarkable for the amount of sheer “brain-stuff” that was expended upon them.  They are erudite, accurate, and scholarly; they are original in thought, they are lucid and stimulating in their presentation and interpretation of fact, and they are often admirable in expression.  They would reflect uncommon credit upon a writer who had given his life to the critical, historical, and philosophical study of music; as the work of a man who had been primarily absorbed in making music, rather than in discussing it, they are extraordinary.