by a sacrifice of their fruits.” Thoreau. Supper of blue-berries. Thoreau.
The Trickling Mountain Spring. “Amy’s Grotto.”
A Dewdrop on leaf (vignette-idea; or tail-piece).
Primeval Elements. Indian Legends, etc. Story of a Fountain. Primeval spring and incident. Hawthorne.
A Trickling Passage. Drops trickling down a spray of Fumitory (Adlumia) over rock.
A Recluse. A shy wood flower.
Indian Pipe—legend?
Loiterings among mossy boulders and ferns.
The Wood-bird’s Bath.
The Harebell.
A Fungus. Some beautiful specimen of Hydnum Agaricum or—
Through the Mossy Groove (bole)—to the old Trough.
Water Trough. This subject must come in book. Make view from above conduit, and looking out through verdure upon road from back of trough. See Hawthorne’s “Town Pump.” “David Swan.”
Waste Water Running along road and under. Plank Bridge (with roadside ford) bordered with tall Galingales, Cat-tails etc.
The Meadow Stream (place after mountain-lake?)
The Meadow Rue (shadow or silhouette).
Sensitive Fern (one of the most antiquated forms of existing ferns).
Cardinal Flower.
A Border Tangle. Galium. Rue.
Coils of Gold. The Jewel-weed (or some other plant). Strangled by the golden dodder. The dodder is mentioned in Lowell’s “Threnodia” as an emblem of love. It is a questionable sort of love that hangs on by the teeth. “Deadly gripe of gold” (Hawthorne).
Hemlock cones and Chickadees.
An Ambuscade. Leaf-nest of large Arachnid.
The Alders.
Gathering Cowslip-greens (combine with picture of plant).
The Trout Brook
The Angler. (Consult Izaak Walton. “Contemplative Man’s Recreation.”)
Beauties (good subject for tail-piece).
The Water-mill. Children playing with toy-wheel. See sketch made at Cumberland, Me.
A Trickling Flume. A mossy flume perched on tall beams, embowered in leafy branches and overgrown with weeds. See photo and sketch of “Haunted Mill” with mill in distance.
The Sawmill (combine cider-mill with same? Washington).
“Highland Stream tamed by human cunning.” Hawthorne.
Riding on Sawmill Carry. Children riding out over abyss on the log-carry.
Under the Mill (old wheel, etc.).
Sheepwashing.
Life under the Water. (Crawfish; leopard-frog, etc.) Under the Water. Battle of dragon-fly and lizard. Caddis-worms and nests.
The Slender Foot-bridge—“Dangerous passage.” Bubby fishing; three or four minnows on string. Lovers.
The Witch Hazel. (Several subjects. See memoranda in “Nature Jottings.”) Unfurling banners and saluting coming snow. The Divining Rod. Old Witch. Witch hazel; (see Whittier’s Poem, Preface or dedication?) Shrub over Brook. Peculiar Quality of perfume. Horizontal Foliage in Wood. Reference in Hawthorne.
Into the Lake. Cascade over precipice into Lake. Boating and fishing.
The Camp. (Adirondacks. See sketch.)
Morning on the Lake (Water-color sketch, deer drinking).
Evening. Hunting with jack. (Dudley Warner’s “Deer hunt.”) “The Loon’s weird laughter, far away.”
The Rise. Trout rising; flash of sun on still water. “Long ripple.” Thoreau.
Sand Orchid. Secret of fertilization. Lovell’s Pond, several varieties——
Pond Lilies? (or on brook?) Yellow pond lilies. Hawthorne’s simile.
The Water Mussel. Beautiful pearl. Saranac lake. Wondrous tints brought out by scouring with sand.
Tiger-beetles on Sand. (Show nests.)
Heron’s Nest (see cut in Harper’s). Evening Subject. Weird Effect.
The Plover.
Evening Mist. Mist rising. Returning skyward. Sun drawing water.
Wild Ducks.
The Bittern. “His precious legs.” Thoreau.
Water Adder. (Winnepesaukee incident, see note-book “Nature Jottings.”)
The Outlet. A Chasm. “Ausable Chasm.”
The Brook (Shepaug?)
The Water-fence.
A Hot Day (cows in water in shade).
Under the Water. Caddis Worms in nest. (Life under ice. Thoreau.) Dragon-fly larvæ.
Battle under Water. “No refuge e’en in water.” Lizard and dragon-fly larva. Aquarium incident.
Scouring Rush (grass) gatherers. See quotations.
Ephemera. (The creatures of an hour. The twilight flight.)
The Crossing Pole (Newtown brook. Children over dark still current).
The Swimming Hole. (Bathers. Twilight effect. Interrupted Bath.)
The Old Bridge.
On the Muddy Beam (Phebe nest or other bird).
A Gravel Island. (Thoreau’s sentiments on beholding an island.)
A Pebbly Beach.
A Still Nook in Shore. Gnats emerging. Boats of Eggs.
A Sungleam from the River bed. Minnow or Sunfish turning. Combine same with Kingfisher, if possible, showing the incident of prey from the fish’s standpoint, under water looking out above. Consult Thoreau’s “Concord River” and his experiences in taming the fish.
The Willows. The Closed Gentian. The Button-bush.
Sailing the Boat.
The Kingfisher (watching for the gleam).
A Bit of Sentiment. Two figures by the brink; thoughts of brook, etc. Similes.
The Freshet. Broken Dam. Ice Blockade. Ice piling and crushing against mill.
A Tumultuous Record. Water sculpture. Torrent making holes in rocks. Worn by boulders. Diana’s Baths, Shepaug Falls. Glassy Ice on Dripping Twigs.
The Swamp
(This section should be introduced here as a “loitering-place” of the saunterer as well as of the brook,—a rest in the journey of the waters when they linger placidly in the old mill-pond, backing-up from the dam, and flooding the lowlands. Although it might be brought in between the mountain-lake and the brook.)
Consider the Black Mountain Swamp for example; Beaver dam, Lenox. Cotton sedge; Sarracenia; Pond lilies; Sphagnum.
A Quaint Cradle. Nest of Reed Warbler or other bird built among reeds or rushes.
Musk-rat Huts. A Musquash Village. Muskrat’s bubble under the ice, driven away from its heath. See “Trapper”; also Thoreau. The provident musk-rat.
Scouts. Spring Heralds. Skunk cabbage.
Winter Botany. Crystalline Botany; Thoreau. It is the anatomy which determines the marked character and distinct individuality of plants, even of the same genus. The winter phantoms present its most perfect and unencumbered articulation, and render their forms against the snow especially conspicuous. Thus have I counted, without effort, eight species of golden-rod, growing in a tangle each as distinctly specific as in its summer dress and ornament.
A Frost Grotto.
Will o’ the Wisp. A fantasy with fairies, nymphs, or naiads.
Haunt of the Hylas.
Cranberry Culture. The Cranberry plant.
After Bullfrogs. Spatter Dock, turtles, etc.; turtles on a projecting log or rock, family group. Pollywogs. Duckweed. Specimen of similar plant. Green shell-like, nerve-like leaf, floating on surface and sending downward a fringe of purplish black rootlets. Found at Washington, spring of 1882.
A Living Opal. A fairy creature of the marsh. This is described in my note-book about two years ago, and I note that Mr. John Burroughs has discovered the same creature and has written of it under title “A Fairy,” in Scribner’s, January, 1883.
Pickerel Weed and Pickerel.
Vallisneria—Anacharsis; waterweed.
Swamp plants for selection. (Here follows a list of some twenty plants.)
Transformation of Neuroptera.
Exquisite Bivalves in the mud (small pearly clams).
The Brook (Continued)
The Millpond.
The Water adder (see notes Lake Winnepesaukee).
Nymphæ; maids of the pond (nymphs floating in mist above the floating lilies. See John Lafarge, portfolio proofs).
Among the Pond-lilies. The Lotus-lily with cup capsule. Allied to Eastern lily. Suggestion of the Nile.
Mirror of the Sunset. (Reflections. Still pond. Mill dam.)
The Heron.
Winter Sports on the Ice. Fishing. Harvesting the Ice-crop. Waiting for a Bite (comic character). (See Wordsworth “To win a pittance from the cold, unfeeling lake.”)
The Grist-Mill. The Miller. (A character from life; Standing at window of mill door. “The mills of the gods.”)
Under the Fall. (Foam. Bubbles that reflect the glories of the world.)
Swallows. (Skimming over water. “Swallows skating on the air.”)
Below the Dam. The Ripples. The marriage of the Waters; (see Poem, Burns). The Camp. Shad-fishing.
The River
The Osprey. (Rising with fish. Tumult of water. Bald eagle and catfish, incident, Cape Cod.) See Wolf’s “Wild Animals.”
The Canoe (modern and Indian).
The Toll Bridge. (Old covered bridge in spans.) Bennett’s Bridge. Glimpse out from openings of bridge.
The Toll-man’s daughter. (Pathos. Dragging the River. The white face among the lily-pads.)
Drifting. (Sentiment.)
Spearing Fish by night.
Drawing the Seine.
The Rope Ferry. (North Hampton.)
Calling the Ferry in “ye olden tyme.” (The swarthy boatman. The Ferryman’s Cottage. Interior of Cottage.)
Cascade and Factories. (Moonlight.)
Through a Large Manufacturing Town.
Picturesque Factories.
Approach to Salt Water. (Stooping from boat to drink from the river,—brackish water! This and the presence of the mallows which had escaped our notice, betoken the inroads of the sea.)
Rest this section herewith.
The Delta and the Deep Sea
Navigation. (Scene on Hudson, or Connecticut, or Mississippi. Barges. Twilight from ferry-boat; (further on?))
Snipe Shooting.
Wild Ducks. (Chesapeake Bay. Clouds of duck,—and hunters.)
Salt Marshes. (Gathering Salt hay. See Sound sketches. “Picturesque America.”)
Crab-fishing. (Sheepshead Bay.)
Low Tide on Marsh. (Fiddler crabs, playing about holes.)
From the edge of the Boat. (A natural aquarium. Hermit Crabs, fishes, mussels, algæ.)
Samphire gatherers. (See Hawthorne. Footprints on Seashore. Samphire luncheon.)
The Prickly Opuntia. (Allude to the wondrous caress of the stamina. A beautiful cactus, common on our shores, yet quite unknown.)
Fisherman’s Huts. (Quaint houses made of canal-boats. Half canal-boat, set up on end. See studio prints.)
Gathering Sea-weeds.
A Nursling of the Sea. (Beautiful floating Laminaria.)
The Throng at the Surf. (Coney Island or Rockaway.)
Oyster-dredging. (Water in action—picturesque boat.)
Among the Driftwood. Eggs of shark or skate.
Wind-waves on Sand. (Original explanation.)
Sand Yellow-Jackets digging caves in sand.
Sand-spider. Gossamer tunnel. Fierce maternal solicitude.
Fairy Circles in Sand (around bending grasses.)
Faint Columns of Gnats in still twilight rising like streaks of smoke from salt-marshes.
Gulls.
Tiger Beetles and holes.
Under the Water.
Rocky Headland. (Mt. Desert, Nahant.)
The Sporting Shoal. Porpoises.
The Vasty Deep. Limitless Mid-ocean.
The Return of the Waters. Waterspout. Earth and Heaven. Finis. A link completing the cycle. Tailpiece.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PERSONAL SIDE
THERE is a curious notice of Gibson’s work, written for a leading New York publication in 1882, which is calculated to fill the minds of his friends with wonder, not unmingled with amusement. The writer attempts a portrait of Gibson’s soul, and does it, as the Irishman made his chopping-block, “out of his own head.” “In some way,” he (or she) says, “Mr. Gibson has never classed himself in our mind with the profession of illustrators, but has seemed rather to stand apart, to work in his own ways, to avoid association, to prefer lonely walks, to follow his own bent, no matter where it leads, and irrespective of any who come after him. These impressions have given a certain solitariness to his figure, so that we fancy him wandering alone up and down the earth, a man of silence, a man of keen and penetrating eye, of ear attent, of swiftly susceptible feelings, who searches out nature in her recesses, and coyest moods, is on the friendliest terms with her, to whose delicate touch she lends herself with an indulgence which coarser lovers are denied”! That extraordinary sketch of the personality of the man is a most felicitous antithesis of the real Gibson. It happily describes what he was not. It is a capital portrait of somebody else. Just where the writer got his materials for such a description, it would be hard to tell. Certainly not from personal contact with the subject. It sounds like a far-off account of Thoreau; as if he had been taken as the likeliest type of a thoroughgoing nature lover, and the lines drawn after the similitude of his strange nature. But it would be hard to find two men in more total contrast than Thoreau and Gibson. The former may have loved “to stand apart, to work in his own ways, to avoid association, to prefer lonely walks.” But the latter loved to touch elbows with his fellow-men; to cultivate friendships and share the joys of society; to walk with a company of congenial spirits, from whom he was always learning something, unless they were those to whom he could always teach something. He was not the least bit of a recluse. A hermitage would have had no charms for him. For he was, in the highest sense, “a man of the world,” who loved his kind, and loved to live with them. There was no “solitariness” about him. He was eminently social. So far was he from “wandering alone up and down the world,” that he always drew a crowd about him, wherever he went. He was no McGregor, to usurp the head of the table; but wherever Gibson was, there was the center of the circle. And, far from being “a man of silence,” he was the freest and easiest of talkers, accessible, communicative, as genial as sunshine, as fluent as a brook.
The nature which was in him began to express itself from the earliest years. In his school-days he was anything but the shy, retiring child which would be the father of such a man as our critic described; and his love and yearning for companionship and the expression of affection come out in almost every one of his juvenile letters. It is so seldom that a boy’s letters really express the boy’s life that one does not feel that they have any permanent interest. But the boy Gibson wrote letters which deserve to be preserved. They are as quaint as if they were fictitious. They could not have been truer to life if they had been made out of whole cloth. It would be hard to match the following, written when he was twelve years old, from the “Gunnery”; its quaint and naïve boyishness is delicious:
“Washington, March 1, 1863.
“Dear Mother:
“I received your letter for the first in three weeks and was as happy as a king and I am now. you may expect a letter from me every week.
“Only till the latter part of this month before the Exhibition, and then comes vacation which I long for very much. Every Friday the boys act a drama; the last one was ‘Love in ’76,’ and it was perfectly splendid and the one before that was ‘Romance under Difficulties,’ and that was better than the last. I wish you could send me up some small dramas because I would like to read them.
“The principal thing among the boys is catching mice with little box traps, (like the one that Grandpa made two or three summers ago) which we make ourselves. One of the boys took some hoopskirt and made a cage to keep his mice in and I made two and have got four traps. The boy that made the first trap made the first cage and he is a very ingenious boy his name is Charley Howard he is a nice boy and is liked throughout this whole great institution as well as the other boys too.
“It is a very unpleasant day first in the morning it snowed and next it rained and now it is snowing again and looks as if it would snow a long while it is dark dismal and foggy.
“I am very sorry that Cotty has so many boils, because I can imagine how they feel but you must tell him he must try to be as patient as Job if he can. The other evening I touched the tip end of my nose to the stove pipe the stove pipe being hot burnt the tip of my nose off so now everywhere I go I am laughed at. It don’t hurt me any to be laughed at if they leave my nose alone that is all I ask.
“The other day I was sliding out in the grove on the ice and I slipped and fell and struck on my sore knee and now it cracks just like it did first, only it don’t hurt me so much, but I guess I will get over it before long. I am known in this school by the name of Fatty and Pussy and am so used to it that I take it as my own name.
“Please ask Julie and Henry if they think that they are big enough to read letters, and if they say yes tell them I will write to them you tell me in your next letter. In your answer let Hubie write as he did in one of your letters.
“And now as I have written you a long letter I will stop. Sending love to you all and give them all a kiss for me.
“From your aff. Willie.
“P. S. Excuse bad writing as I have a sore finger.”
The same winter he wrote to his sister; and surely nothing could be more delightfully artless than the patronizing little moral harangue with which the letter begins—a strain which ends in such complacent satisfaction over his own success as a good boy! It must have been mightily encouraging to the little girl. But when he drops into narrative and gives such a vivid account of his skating adventures, one begins to feel the real boy’s heart again:
“Washington, Feb. 24, 1863.
“Dear Julie:
“I guess that you are getting to be a great big girl by this time and I hope that you are trying to be a good girl too and that you are trying to correct all your bad habits. I am trying to do it and succeed very well.
“I will now tell you about my last skate; we all started at half past nine in the morning and went to a lake warramaug which is 5 miles from Mr. Gunn’s house I walked up there and put on my skates and off I went like a streak of blue greased lightning and the ice was as smooth as glass and a foot thick after I skated about four hours, something happened. did the ice break, No! did my skate break, No! My buckle, NO! the clouds broke and their contents were spilled upon the earth and you had better believe that I got off my skates and put for home with my legs in my boots. It was a snow storm. On going home I summed up how many miles I had been that day and found out that I had gone on my own legs no body else’s you understand, I had that day gone 20 miles. the next day I was sick. I soon got over it and was all right again.
“I remain your aff. Brother
“Willie.
“Give love to all write soon.”
Sometime during this same year he wrote in quite a different vein to his mother. He shows a spirit “strenuous” enough to suit the most aggressive, and as tender as strenuous. There are two or three points of school ethics which appear with much force in his account of the trouble:
“The other night a few of the boys (Henry and I included) were playing ‘blind man’s buff’ in the kitchen, and I was it and one of the boys got a hand full of pepper and doused it in Henry’s eyes. of course Henry cried some, but you couldn’t get him to tell Mr. Gunn and at last one of the boys Daniel B. Gunn told Mr. Gunn and he called him in there and sent all the other boys to bed. When I was just getting in bed, a knock came at my door and I opened it and there stood ‘Henry’ with a handkerchief up to his face a crying he kissed me good night and went in his room. Pretty soon after I went in his room and he was still crying and told him not to mind it but keep a wet handkerchief to it and it wouldn’t ache much, so he did so and he felt quite comfortable. I told Ralph (which was the boy that did it) if he ever did another thing of the kind to my brother, I would knock him down, and I think I ought to. If I had only seen Ralph do it I would have knocked him down on the spot and teach him to mind his own business.
“According to Mr. Gunn’s rules ‘Stick up for your Brother’ and I mean to do it.
“With love to all, I remain your aff. son.
“Willie.”
Other letters written in these delightful school-days show him at the time when the boy-mind begins to realize the importance of dress and of personal adornment. The episode of the diamond pin is told with characteristic frankness and vivacity. But another paragraph from the letter shows a most commendable fondness for his old hat—a marked evidence of the genuine sentiment of the boy’s nature. The description of the football field and its unfailing perils carries a contemporaneous interest; and a boy’s account of his studies is always fascinating reading. The brief story of the prayer-meeting in “Willie Beecher’s” room and his confidence in the leader who “can explain about any passage in the Bible” must close these glimpses into the real heart of an unspoiled and ingenuous boy. They are a key to his nature,—its frankness, heartiness, enjoyment of simple things, a self-confidence that was destined to help him touch the goal of a great success, singularly combined with a humility which kept him always open to reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. They show his warm and affectionate nature, which never changed but to deepen and sweeten as he matured. They reveal his earnestness and sincerity; traits which underlie all his qualities like the bedrock of the continent, and on which his fun and frolic grew as naturally as grass and foliage out of the soil which masks and clothes the granite:
“Washington, Conn., May 21, 1864.
“Dear Mother:
“I arrived here safely. Meeting Willie B. and Bertie B. & Mary Gunn all at Newtown in the cars. We had a very pleasant time coming up & Mrs. Gunn was delighted with the Tulips. Everybody noticed my diamond pin, & I tell you what!!!! They praise it up, saying & asking me how much it cost? and having me stand still, so that they might see it, once in a while I do stand still & let them feast their eyes on it. Some of them ask me if it is glass set round with Gutta Percha and brass. I always tell them ‘yes of course.’ I tell you what!! I’m proud of it and will keep it & conform to your rules. I wear it whenever I go to school & put the guard on my shirt, so if the tie should fall off it would be held on. I suppose you remember the blue tie that you got me. I wore it up from N. Y. to here, & my rough coat rubbing against it made it look awful, bringing out all the shoddy, and making it look like down all over the tie.
“When I got home I took every bit of the white stuff out & now all the boys think it looks a great deal prettier. Dear Mother I want to tell you something about that hat. It is one that I have had two winters, and I like it because it is so old. I would rather have this one than a new one, and the other is not fit to wear and doesn’t fit me, so Henry may have a new one.
“Mrs. Gunn thinks that I ought to have my own old hat. And she is going to try and have the other one fixed up for Henry.
“Here I must stop,
I am your affectionate Son,
“Willie.”
“Washington, Conn.,
“Dec. 6, 1864.
“My dear Mother:
“It is a very cold day, and we have just come in from out doors. We all have been playing foot ball Which is a very exciting game. However I dont play much for the simple reason, that I am too short winded. A great many of the boys get their shins kicked, but I am very fortunate, for I have never got mine kicked but once and then I kicked it myself, when I meant to have kicked the foot-ball. At all times of the recess you can look about the green and see certain boys hopping about holding one leg up, and crying.
. . . . . .
“This year I study a great many lessons, Latin, Anatomy, Book-keeping, Spelling, & Arithmetic. In Latin, I get along nicely. It seems a great deal easier this term than it ever has yet. In Anatomy I get along perfectly splendid. I know every bone in your body and the latin (or Scientific) names of them all. in book-keeping I get along nicely. In Arithmetic I am in square root and I understand it perfectly. I guess that if Mr. Gunn writes to you, he will say that I get along very well in my studies, and you can tell Father so too.
“I suppose that he thinks that I idle away my time writing letters. to be sure I do write a great many letters, but I don’t write them until all my studies are learned. now this is so. And while a person is away from home he wants to hear from his friends. All the boys write a great many letters.
“Please send me some postage stamps in your letter.
“Here I must stop with love to all.
“I remain your aff. Son Willie.”
“Washington, Conn.,
“Jan. 22, 1865.
“My dear Mother:
“Are you getting better, I hope so. I am very anxious about you, & you must not think that I forget you, because I think of you all the time, and pray for you every night.
“Willie Beecher has a prayer-meeting in his room every saturday night, & a great many boys attend. I am one of them, and I am liked more this term than any yet. Willie is superintendent and he can explain, about any passage in the bible, to us, so that we can perfectly understand it.”
But the poor boy did not always keep his lofty and self-approving mood. Near the close of the same year he had occasion to realize how hard it is to tread the right line of virtue. His wrath at one of the boys and his doings got the better of his good feeling, and he vented himself in some strong language written to one of the boys at home. This, being brought to his mother’s attention, drew down a sharp reprimand, which was quite effectual,—almost too effectual one feels, on reading dear Mrs. Gunn’s calm and wise view of it. But the quick, passionate grief of the repentant boy shows his warm and wholesome heart:
“Washington, Dec. 9th, 1863.
“Dear Mother:
“I received your letter and with repeated sobs heard Mrs. Gunn read it to me. I am very sorry for what I said in Frank’s letter and I sincerely promise that I never will commit such a wrong again. And do please forgive me this time and take me into your arms again. Tell Mrs. Howard if you see her that I am very sorry and will never permit such a thing to come out of my mouth again. I will write to Frank and apologize for it. And I don’t think you will ever reprove me of such a wrong again.
“With much love I remain your affectionate Son
“Willie.
“He that calleth his brother a fool is in danger of hell fire. I will remember this.”
When this letter went to his mother Mrs. Gunn sent the following with it.
“Wednesday eve.
“My Dear Mrs. Gibson:
“Willie was almost heartbroken, when he heard your letter, which he had given to me to read to him, without a suspicion of its contents. He went immediately, without prompting from any one, and wrote this answer. I am glad to see that he makes no attempt to excuse himself, and I rejoice that the ‘expression’ came so soon to your knowledge. He will never forget the lesson. I know he is not in the habit of using such expressions, and cannot account for his having written it. I think he does not quarrel at all with Henry. You will think from Henry’s letter to Juliet, that he is suffering from homesickness, but he seems perfectly happy. His mother’s letter made him long to see you all and he wrote to Juliet immediately. He and Bertie are very happy together and he is getting on nicely now with all the boys. At first he used to get himself into trouble constantly by calling them names, and treating them as I suppose he had been treated by village boys in Newtown. I presume it was that which made Willie write of him as he did, as he was very much annoyed by it. I have heard nothing of it for some days past, and conclude that he has discovered the way to live happily and pleasantly with the other boys. He is a dear little fellow and always good to us, obedient and cheerful.
In haste, yours sincerely,
“A. J. Gunn.”
In a letter written a week later he comes back to the subject in the same tone of grief and honest penitence; and he gives another glimpse at his real nature. For when a boy tells you what he thinks about after he has gone to bed at night, he has taken you very much into his confidence.
“Washington, Conn., Dec. 15, 1863.
“Dear Mother:
“You can’t realize how sorry I feel for that great misconduct that happened about a week ago and I want to be forgiven. Will you forgive me this time.
“Christmas is now near at hand and I have concluded to stay here and I suppose you had rather have me to. Mrs. Gunn has just got through reading ‘Eric or little by little’ and the boys were delighted with it only they didn’t like to have the ‘hero’ of the story die. They expected to have it turn out that he would be a great man: But it didn’t. You know that he died on hearing that his Mother was very sick and might die. It ended up very sad and scarcely a boy ceased to cry. It is a beautiful book and impressed several things on the hearts of some of our boys and I realy believe it has done them some good and if it hasn’t done them any I think it has me. Often in bed I think of ‘Eric’ and hope that I will never do some of the bad things he did; but, on the other hand if I turn out to be as good a boy as he turned out to be I will be satisfied and I guess you will to.”
Out of such a frank, hearty, kindly boyhood, there matured its natural and necessary fruit. The boy was father to the man. The mature Gibson was no disappointment to the hopes of those who had known him in youth. He had all the charm of a perfectly natural and wholesome nature, developing along lines which strengthened constantly all that was noblest and most admirable in it. He was able to express himself fully in his work; and his self-expression constantly broadened and deepened his best qualities.
His exuberant nature continually overflowed in fun. His seriousness was tempered by an unfailing sense of humor, and his tremendous energy was stopped short of oppressiveness by his capacity for play. He had the secret of perpetual youth. He always kept the heart of boyhood. His letters bubbled with mirth. His talk was bright with it. All his friends have memories of this side of his life which form one of the most delightful legacies from that past. But there is no preserving the effervescence of such a nature. It is never the same on the memorial page. His own spirit was so much a part of it all that without his personality behind the joke it would lose half its point. But whether he made sport for a company, as in his droll stories at the club, or raised the laugh in the flow of personal talk, his touch was sure, his humor was contagious.
Probably no trait in him thus throve and grew as did his enthusiasm, his zest in living, his love of what he did, and what he saw, and what he contributed to other lives. To all who knew him he was a fellow of infinite zest. He enjoyed life. He enjoyed all lives, both great and small, human and sub-human. A friend used to say of him that Gibson was a man who thoroughly enjoyed himself. No doubt he did. For that is only another way of saying that he rejoiced in the things God had given him, the powers which were at once endowment and working capital in his life. No man ever took more keen delight in what is commonly counted the drudgery of toil. He really did not seem to be conscious of the hardship of hard work or the irksomeness of the set task. He so thoroughly loved the thing which he did, that all labor was a labor of love. That took away the sense of bondage to his business, and was one of the secrets of his immense endurance, his elasticity under heavy loads, his exuberance of spirits in situations when most men would have sunk overwhelmed.
He had the trait which marks all such natures, a whole-heartedness in all that he undertook, which made him a difficult man to overcome, to put down, or to defeat. That was obvious in all his hard apprenticeship; in his determined struggle for success; in his loyalty to his own ideals. It came out in some other incidents of his life. His vigorous fight against the spirit of vandalism which threatened the natural beauties of Prospect Park, at the hands of a dense and narrow officialism, was a case in point. In the spring of 1887, Mr. Gibson, in the course of a stroll through the Park, was filled with the consternation and wrath which are inevitable in a real nature-lover when he finds that ignorant and unsympathetic hands—and heads—have been busy destroying the natural beauties which years of artificial culture cannot make good. As he wrote in a communication to one of the most reputable journals of the day: “One of the wildest and most beautiful sections of the Park had been invaded by the butcherly Goths and Vandals known as our Park Commissioners. Chaos reigned on every side—beautiful fresh trees by the score, lying in piles of logs among seas of chips, bonfires of brushwood on every hand, and the beauty of the place otherwise hacked and slashed on all sides.” Gibson at once sounded an emphatic and indignant warning through the columns of the Brooklyn “Eagle.” The Park Commissioners replied through an agent in contemptuous fashion, and declared that all they had been doing was to cut down “a lot of ailanthus trees.” They did not know the caliber of their critic. In a second letter Gibson reiterated his charges and showed as the result of actual count and careful identification, that over two hundred trees had been felled in one small acre, and that these included large and beautiful specimens of white birch, black birch, willow, elm, poplar, sweet-gum, flowering dogwood, hornbeam, European alder, nettle-tree, young maple, and numerous other varieties of the minor sylvae, comprising one of the most beautiful pieces of underwood to be found in any park. The Park Commissioners met this new charge with a square denial. Gibson produced new and indisputable evidence to confute them; induced a committee of gentlemen of the highest standing and intelligence to investigate the premises and the evidences of his accuracy,—including Dr. Charles H. Hall, Dr. Charles C. Hall, Dr. Truman J. Backus, and Dr. Almon Gunnison,—who over their own names verified all his statements. Then the Commissioners were forced to admit his charges (and thus, indirectly, their own untruthfulness), but claimed that what they had done was in the nature of the “improvement” of the Park. Then Gibson challenged the discomfited Commissioners to refer their claim of “improvement” to Samuel Parsons, the Superintendent of Central Park, requesting his expert decision whether this cutting was or was not a justifiable artistic or skilful piece of landscape gardening. The challenge was not accepted. There was no need that it should be. Gibson had roused a vigorous public sentiment which forced the Commissioners to call a halt in their reckless and stupid work; and his absolute honesty, accuracy, and readiness as an advocate had put his adversaries to shame and confusion. The incident is well worth recalling as an evidence of what one honest and vigorous citizen can do in the correction of a public evil. It is even more interesting as an illustration of the thoroughness and grasp of his mind on all subjects of which he claimed any right to speak.
His encounters with his critics were often as amusing as they were interesting, on account of the completeness with which he would effect their refutation and overthrow. His very neat rejoinder to that redoubtable critic, Charles A. Dana, was a piquant instance of the care with which he took a position, as well as of the skill with which he defended it. Mr. Dana had taken Gibson to task in the columns of the “Sun,” for using the form “witch-hazel” instead of “wych-hazel,” which he held to be the correct and original form,—“wych” being an old Saxon word which means “hanging,” and has been applied to foliage with pendent stems. Gibson responded in a very brief letter showing that while both forms of the word had sanction, yet that the oldest and the latest botanists used the form which he had adopted, as well as the most reputable dictionaries of that date. His summing-up, in a letter to the “New York Tribune,” is too well-turned to be translated or abridged.
“Who then are my authorities? The botanical scholars; Thoreau, Tennyson; The Imperial Dictionary, Stormonth’s, Webster’s, and Worcester’s Dictionaries; and I might add, last but by no means least, ‘The American Cyclopedia,’ an able authority which presents conspicuously the questioned form ‘witch-hazel,’ and upon whose title-page, by the way, the name of Charles A. Dana appears significantly as editor.”
Well might an intimate friend write to him, after such an effective “counter”: “Against a literary shot like that, which hits the bull’s eye squarely in the center, no ‘literary sins’ of a minor order can count for much even when they are proved; and no one who has the power to make the shot need be over-modest about his literary ability—he has the essential thing.”
Quite as dramatic in its completeness was the refutation to which he subjected a critic of his illustrations, who had accused him of owing much that there was of merit in his pictures to the skill of his engravers. Gibson’s own letter tells the whole story and exposes his critic in the fewest possible words.
This is the incident referred to in one of Mr. Roe’s letters to Gibson which appears in his memoir (p. 189).
“The Editor of the ‘Tribune.’
“Dear Sir:
“I observe this evening in the current number of the ‘Critic,’ an art reference which calls for a slight correction. In a review of ‘Nature’s Serial Story,’ by E. P. Roe, after paying a delicate compliment to the illustrations of the volume the reviewer goes on to say that, ‘without detracting from the artist’s meed of praise, the most remarkable thing about these illustrations is the extraordinary skill displayed by the engravers.... Mr. Henry Marsh, whose delicacy and precision of touch are marvelous, shows the still rarer power of taking up the theme submitted to him by the artist and adding increment after increment of meaning to it until it becomes almost wholly his own. His engraving of “A Winter Thunder-Storm” is the finest thing in the book. We give the credit to him because we know that Mr. Gibson’s forte is not in landscape.’
“I yield to no one in my admiration of Mr. Marsh not only as a master and a poet in his art, but equally as an esteemed personal friend. Indeed I love him too well, and have too great a respect for his interpretative genius to see attributed to him a piece of work which I am sure he would not care to claim, although it is ‘the finest thing in the book’ and fraught with ‘increment after increment of meaning’ and which is nevertheless nothing but a photo-engraved plate, by a purely mechanical process. Of course the ‘Critic’ (?) will hasten to make all due acknowledgments and place the credit where it righteously belongs, i. e., to the Ives Photo-Engraving Company, Phila., Pa., whose admirable process has reproduced not only this, but several others of the illustrations in which the aforesaid alleged marvelous ‘increment’ was discovered. Such is fame!
“Shade of Albrecht Dürer! Who are our critics?”
Mr. Roe wrote under date of Dec. 29, 1884: “You did indeed win a victory over the ‘incrementitious’ critic. I should think he would wish to crawl into a small hole, and pull the hole in after him. I enjoyed your triumph as much as if it had been my own. It was the neatest thrust under the fifth rib I ever saw, and I fear I shall never have enough of Christian meekness not to enjoy seeing a fellow receive his congé when so well deserved. Dr. Abbott and I took part in the ‘wake’ up here.”
Another instance of his trapping the friendly critic is preserved in his correspondence. Colonel Gibson had objected to the “Old Barnyard” as pictured in “Pastoral Days.” “The sloppy slush through which the man is splashing” he wrote, “is almost too faithful. But, my dear fellow,—an apple-tree in a cow-yard!—and loose fence-posts leaning on it!... And do you ever see trees or shrubs on the pond side of a mill?” (referring to the skating scene in the same paper). To which Gibson the artist made answer as follows:
“I have had considerable amusement over my large and most important work at the last display, viz.: ‘Autumn at Knoll Farm,’ bought first day by Henry Ward Beecher, who says that ‘the Colmans, the Giffords, or the Smiths can’t beat it.’ He tells all his friends so, and in his appreciation of it only sounds the universal praise which it met with; but, mark you! Our most high-toned and modern art publication, ‘The Art Review,’ which employs the finest staff of contributors the country affords, contained in its last issue a criticism that ‘did me proud’ and at the same time gave me a jolly laugh at the way I had ‘fooled’ one of our most noted art critics. He went on at the beginning of his ‘critique’ to condemn lightly the body-color school, claimed that it took away from the atmosphere, ‘made mud,’ was always likely to hurt rather than improve a painting. He hedged himself however in the statement that ‘a skilful hand could obtain a finer effect with ‘body color’ than an unskilled hand with wash.’ But he did not see the necessity of using it at all.’ ‘Not even for the most bold subjects is it necessary.’ ... ‘Take for instance Swain Gifford’s (I forget title, but it was a very strong bit of color), rich and full of strength, or even W. H. Gibson’s very strong “Autumn,” all rocks and tree trunks and weeds and admirable sky, all done with pure blots.’ Mark you! Those rocks and tree trunks and weeds were all put in thick with body color, painted over. The result was a rich full texture, that could not have been got in wash without at least much more labor and I doubt even then. Others are deceived in the same way, and I repeat that the result sanctifies the means, and I will guarantee to deceive any critic in the country on the question of body color. I sold