Foote writes a kind letter seemingly in response to a request from an autograph collector, briefly reflecting on his long career and other notable American musicians of his day: Thank you very much for…[the] list of the autographs which you possess. I am very happy that you are going to include me, as one of the elder generation of American composers. Indeed it's a long record to look back to - over 50 years as teacher, with the first composition published just 50 years ago - Matters were very different then, in the [18]80's, but we had John K. Paine (my teacher), J.C.A. Parker, Chadwick, Dudley Buck and a few others of less consequence, while MacDowell was just coming into notice…Hadley, Arthur Whiting, Carpenter, Hill, etc. were yet to come.

Foote closes the letter with a three-bar quotation from his Suite in D minor.

Arthur Foote, John Knowles Paine, George Chadwick, Amy Beach, Edward MacDowell, and Horatio Parker comprised what music historians now call "The Boston Six", a group of composers who at the turn of the twentieth century began to develop a distinctly American style of classical composition.