William Hamilton Gibson: artist—naturalist—author

three of my pictures and it looks as though the rest would go too.

“I am glad you admired my ‘Idyl’ and especially so that you should have thought to write me about it. It is always pleasant to receive such letters, although unpleasant to think that you are obliged to send such horrible scrawls in return. But I believe you are good at ‘puzzles’ even if it is a 13.15.14. But you slipped up in your overhauling of that barn with its fence-posts leaning against an apple-tree, and an ‘apple-tree in a barn-yard’! Know, my friend, that that apple-tree and barn, with all their ‘improbabilities’ in the way of posts and apple-trees, etc., were direct from a photograph which I made from nature with my little camera, and all these things were there. The old mill with its ‘pond-side trees’ was also from nature, and if you will take another look at it, consider these questions meanwhile: What does the mill stand on? Could not a tree grow from the ground at its other indefinite end and spread toward you?”

He was a man of many and warm friendships. It was natural for him to like and to love his fellow-men. He opened his heart and his lips readily to all who came to him in sincerity and in friendliness. But he had special places in his life and thoughts for those who stood nearest to him in sympathy and affinity. The “old boys” of the “Gunnery” were accorded a high place in his heart, and so were those who later became his neighbors in Washington. His affection for Mr. and Mrs. Gunn was almost a sacred passion with him, and never waned but rather grew throughout his life. Very tender and beautiful were the expressions of this affection which passed between himself and his old teacher.

No less genuine and tender was his devotion to Henry Ward Beecher, his pastor as a boy in Plymouth, his friend and sympathizer always. His frank and open nature was one to which the warm heart of the great preacher would naturally be drawn; and Beecher’s fervid, enthusiastic personality would as inevitably attract and hold the appreciative, impulsive heart of the young artist. There was little danger of misunderstanding between these two. Through all the great sorrow of Mr. Beecher’s life, young Gibson was his enthusiastic champion, his loyal friend. His own heart was heavy and hot by turns, over the hounding of Mr. Beecher. He wrote at the close of a letter to his wife:

“Mr. D. worked me up into a red-hot rage this evening, by his insufferable and insulting remarks against Mr. Beecher. If he were a gentleman he would at least have manners enough not to insult Mr. Beecher to my face, knowing him to be my pastor and personal friend.”

In a later letter of the same year, he excuses himself for not writing oftener, by saying:

“My mind has been full of this trouble, not through anxiety about Mr. Beecher’s innocence or guilt, but more through my belief in his innocence and consequent pity and sorrow for him. I love him almost as a father. He has done more than I can tell for my spiritual good, and his kindness and interest in me have drawn me close to him.”

He poured his whole heart into a letter which he sent with the volume which he had dedicated to Mr. Beecher:

An interesting side-light is thrown on a now memorable event in Plymouth Church in another letter, written on the same day on which Mr. Beecher delivered his famous sermon in denunciation of Calvinism, and made his outspoken and unmistakable revolt against the stern dogmas of an older day. There is little doubt that Gibson was one of the quickest and heartiest in the applause which he describes:

“Mr. Beecher delivered, this morning, to an immense audience the finest sermon of his life,—the most eloquent effort, without doubt, that ever escaped his lips. He was heartily applauded throughout the house several times, as he vehemently denounced the right of bishops and other ecclesiastical heads, to usurp authority in the Church. True Christianity, he said, implied liberty. Men should not turn their hearts to Christ through fear but through love. The God that has been and is still preached in the churches throughout the land, is not a god but a devil. If he could picture a monster the most horrible and cruel imaginable it would be the God which is preached in many of our churches and to thousands of our people. He maintained his utter independence, and said that no man could say to him what he should do or what he should not do, he was responsible to God alone, and if he was inspired to preach the gospel to his people he would do it with all his heart and all his soul and would give utterance to every thought he chose. ‘Men say I shall not, I say I shall.’ Christianity, he said, had been trampled under foot by the spirit of ecclesiastical authority, that the time was approaching when liberty in the church was to rule triumphant and until it did the world would suffer.

“His voice rose very high and it was altogether the most eloquent effort he has ever made in this pulpit,—and is so conceded by all whom I have spoken with. I never saw Mr. Beecher when he appeared happier and healthier than now.

“It had been almost decided to send him away on a six months’ vacation for rest, but he to-day refused to take it, saying that he did not need it and would rather stay at home with his people as ‘they needed his preaching and he needed to preach.’ I am going to call on him soon.”

To attempt to enumerate the authors and the artists, the critics and the clergymen, the naturalists and the nature “amateurs” with whom he was on friendly and even intimate terms would be to make a long catalogue of the most eminent men of his time. It would include such names as Stedman and Stoddard, Beard and Murphy, Abbott and Ludlow, Burroughs and Roe and Ellwanger, Parsons and Alden and the Egglestons. His correspondence included men and women from all over the world. His genius appealed to men of all classes and pursuits—to all who had the simple heart of childhood and its open eye. And that genius was so full of the vitality of the individual, so warm with his own personality, that to admire him as artist or naturalist was to be drawn to him as a man. He seemed to come to people as a friendly interpreter and as a helpful friend, unlocking new gates outward into nature’s life, disclosing new horizons, telling new secrets of the Cosmos. The tone of the letters he received from hundreds of unknown admirers shows that he was everywhere held as a personal friend, a teacher who won at once the attention, the admiration, and the love of his disciples.

Two letters from correspondents curiously remote from each other are types of the hundreds who were drawn by the human spirit of his writings to ply him with questions, or overwhelm him with appreciation and gratitude. From the confines of civilization on the north to the boundary of the nation on the south, the friends whom he had made by his pencil and his pen, his art and his scientific knowledge, appealed to him with an instinctive feeling that he would understand them, welcome them, help them if he could. Nor were they ever disappointed. The first letter is from bleak Anticosti Island:

The second letter, a few years before, came from the extreme southwest:

One could add to these indefinitely. A minister in the northwest, a lover of flowers and a true woodsman, has a fine program for a canoeing trip on Minnesota rivers and lakes; a farmer’s wife writes to ask direction to some simple manual which will help her copy flowers in color, and encloses some examples of her simple work; an admiring poet sends some verses which will not scan, and will be glad to have her adulations published,—and remuneration secured; another admirer insists that he is not an autograph fiend,—but he would like a letter in reply to his praises; an impecunious poet suggests an immediate loan of ten dollars; a mother in a western state sends some admirable sketches done by her daughter and wishes his judgment upon their merits. People felt his kindly nature in his writings and in his pictures. It was a virtue that went out of him, and drew like a loadstone.

Nowhere, perhaps, outside the charmed and privileged circle of the “Gunnery” boys,—they were always “boys” and “girls” to one another!—was he more welcome or more warmly cherished than at the Authors Club. He counted it a great honor to be chosen into that favored circle, and as he was one of its earliest members, so he was one of its most constant and loyal supporters. Whenever he could he joined in its social conclaves and its decorous revels; and his presence was always a guarantee of good fellowship, unconstrained, talkative, and sparkling. In the earliest home of the Club in East Fifteenth St.; in its rooms in West Twenty-fourth St.; later in the West Twenty-third St. quarters; and finally in the soaring apartments to which it attained, Gibson’s was one of the familiar figures, as it was one of those most commonly sought out of strangers. But it was never a figure with “a certain solitariness,” as seen by his imaginative critic. Wherever Gibson sat or stood, there was sure to be a group. Men gathered about him as birds flock to the banks of a rippling stream. Nor was he any slower in coming to the side of others. He sought companionship as frankly as he gave it. He was always running over with bright, attractive talk; but he had a willing ear. He was conscious of his power to attract; but it never bred in him the slightest condescension toward others. He was passionately fond of wit, and humor, and all the honest fun of life; but he never showed a particle of coarseness, and he never confounded fun with foulness. He was as much at home with the largest minds and characters as he was with the simple farmers and rustics, he delighted to describe; for he met all men on the ground of their common brotherhood,

and had no absurd consciousness of external condition and accidental differences to embarrass him. His reverence and his religiousness were profound elements of his nature. He was no formalist. Probably he did not set a very high value upon some of the externals of spiritual life which seem so important to many men. He was, indeed, a loyal supporter of religious works and enterprises, as he was a member of the visible church; and he paid the highest respect to all that pertained to what is commonly demanded as a mark of Christian life and interest. But he had a life in the Spirit which was larger and broader than all that. He felt and he loved the Divine Life in all that he saw, and heard, and studied, and tried to draw and paint, in the world around him. To his thinking it was all the expression of God; as such he reverenced the creation. Through this world of nature he was always seeing and feeling the Father. His letters breathe a note of honest devoutness which passes all lip-service. And scattered through his pages are frequent expressions of a spirituality deeper than any words or phrases which so easily become cant. There is a deep revelation of the heart of the man in a passage in “Woodnotes.” Listen to his soul pouring itself out in these words:

“Sitting alone in the woods I have sometimes known a moment of such supreme exaltation that I have almost questioned my sanity—a spirit and an impulse which I would no more attempt to frame into words than I should think to define the Deity himself—‘I am glad to the brink of fear.’ My own identity is a mystery. The presence of the dearest friend on earth would be an unwelcome intrusion. The pulses of the woods beat through me. The joyous flight of bird brings buoyant memories, the linnet’s song now seems swelling in my own throat. Happy Donatello in the garden of the Borghese is no longer a myth, though even he knew no such joy as this. At such times—and are they not vouchsafed to every true ‘Holy-Lander’?—I am conscious of an unwonted sympathy in nature—a strange, double, paradoxical existence, which, while lifting me to the clouds, still holds me to the earth.”

It was this inner soul of nature as it filled the inner soul of the man, which he felt a growing power to express in art. But before he could speak his message he passed from our presence.

CHAPTER IX

AFTERGLOW

FOR many months preceding the summer of 1896, Mr. Gibson had felt himself failing in health. The strain of his long lecture-tours told seriously upon his strength, and several times he suffered from fainting attacks and vertigo, sometimes in the very presence of his audiences. When he withdrew from the city in the early summer, it was with a knowledge that his health was impaired, and the hope, as well, that in Washington, at “The Sumacs,” he would find the quiet and the rest which would restore the tone of his system and repair the wastes of excessive work. But this hope was not to be fulfilled. He himself was depressed and apprehensive, and his friends shared his fears. A slight improvement seemed to come with midsummer, but proved illusory. On Thursday evening, the 16th of July, he left his home to go after his mail at the village post-office. Meeting a number of friends and acquaintances he sat down outside the office for a chat with them. He appeared to be in excellent spirits, and for an hour was quite himself. Then he turned to a gentleman beside him and asked if there was anything wrong about his speech. He said his voice seemed thick, and that he could not articulate plainly. A book he held in his hand dropped to the floor several times, and he seemed unable to retain his hold of it. Being asked if he felt ill, he said that he did, and suggested that he should walk to the residence of Dr. Ford. His friends prevailed upon him to remain quiet, and one of their number hurried for medical aid. Drs. Ford and Brown soon arrived, and they did all in their power for their patient. A wagon was soon brought to the door, and Mr. Gibson was placed in a chair in the wagon, but before they had reached his beautiful home, “The Sumacs,” he had ceased breathing, and upon the friends who had accompanied him was thrown the task of breaking the sad news to his wife and children.

On Sunday, the 19th, occurred the funeral services, a tender and sympathetic account of which was given in “Plymouth Chimes.”

“The village of Washington, Connecticut, has been made famous by the ‘Gunnery’ School, and by Mr. Gibson, its illustrious pupil, who received within its walls the inspiration of his career. The forests, thickets, and hillsides of that picturesque region furnished the favorite subjects of his pencil and pen; and, after he had achieved professional success, he established at Washington, among the friends of his boyhood, his country home. Everybody there knew and loved him, and was proud of him. And when death suddenly came to him, it was felt to be an element of mercy in the shock of sorrow, that he was struck down in the midst of happy intercourse with his neighbors.

“The funeral service, held on Sunday afternoon, July 19th, at his residence, ‘The Sumacs,’ was keyed throughout to triumph and thanksgiving, rather than gloom. The day was bright and cool; birds sang about the house; wild flowers and green branches filled all available spaces; and the crowd of neighbors sat in the pleasant rooms or out on the porch beyond the open door.

“The Scripture, read by Mr. Carter, the Washington pastor, comprised passages descriptive of the glory of God in nature, and of the triumph and rest of the saints. The prayer, by Mr. Turner (formerly pastor at Washington, and now chaplain at the Hampton Institute, in Virginia), was similarly attuned to solemn exultation. The hymns (favorites of Mr. Gibson) were ‘Love Divine,’ ‘Abide with Me,’ and ‘Upward Where the Stars are Burning’—the last sung exquisitely as a solo; the two others, with scarcely less tender sweetness, by the whole company.

“The address, by his life-long friend, Dr. R. W. Raymond, was, from beginning to end, an expression of gratitude rather than grief. It enumerated the features of the victorious, happy, fruitful, sincere, loving, and devout life which had been sent as a blessing and inspiration among men. Several anecdotes were related, illustrative of Mr. Gibson’s sympathy with all living things, and of the surprising way in which it was recognized and reciprocated.

“It was told, for instance, how he could take a wild bird from the branch of a tree, caress it, and return it unharmed and unfrightened; how strange birds would fly to him and light upon his shoulder; and how even butterflies seemed to be attracted to him.

“The address closed with a beautiful poem, written for the occasion by Dr. Raymond.

“Through shady roads the funeral procession of carriages and pedestrians passed to the loveliest spot in Washington, the burial-ground, which occupies the side of a hill, commanding a prospect of forest and meadow, stream and mountain, full of peace and beauty. The grave was lined with green branches and fringed with goldenrod; and after a hymn ‘The Home-land’ and a prayer, the casket was gently lowered into this bower of rest. And then, under the benediction of the sunset, the mortal body of William Hamilton Gibson was left to its repose.”

The fine word spoken by Dr. Raymond on this occasion is one which should have a lasting place among the memorials of his friend. It was in such entire harmony with the spirit of the hour, with the memories which were uppermost, with the sense of loss, and the still deeper sense of life enriched and

brightened by the earthly work which was ended, that it was instantly recognized as at once synopsis and echo of Gibson’s career. Dr. Raymond said:

“I count it a great privilege to stand here this day, and utter the love and sorrow of so many souls. Words are but feeble expedients for such a task; yet there is, in one respect, a significant choice of words. Shall we express grief or gratitude? Shall we measure our loss by the vacancy it has left behind, or count with joy the treasure we have had, giving God thanks that we had it so long and so abundantly? For my part, I would not desecrate with the wailing of grief this sky of Sabbath peace, or that face of serene triumph and repose. Let us measure our love and our sorrow, then, in terms of gratitude. Thanks be to God for the unspeakable gift to us of a victorious, happy, fruitful, helpful, sincere, loving, devout, inspired life, which, once received among us, we can never lose. Even the nearest and dearest and most bitterly bereaved can comfort grief with gratitude.

“I say it was a victorious life. I knew William Hamilton Gibson when he was a boy; and I knew the struggle of his early life, when, impelled by an irresistible impulse towards art, and nature as its inspiration, he steadily pursued that ideal, “not disobedient to the heavenly vision,’ until, in spite of the warnings of the would-be wise, and the carpings of the would-be critical, he won for himself a recognition of his genius and the love and thanks of multitudes whose lives he had enriched and exalted by his work. He accomplished what he set out to do; and I say his victorious life is in that respect a blessing to us, as showing for our encouragement, in these days of change and failure, that a man may still be lord of his circumstances, and, as in the affairs of the heart, so also in the affairs of business, may win and wear his first love.

“But some men gain their victories at heavy cost, and bear always the scars of the conflict. Not so he. His was a harmonious, happy life, attuned to love and beauty and peace, and aflame with joy. And for this reason it was a fruitful and helpful life. There was no power wasted in friction or in blind resistance. He breasted waves of difficulty like a strong, exultant swimmer cleaving his way through the opposing element. Like some gay knight of chivalry, he went into battle with a song. And whithersoever he came—handsome, eager, sympathetic, debonair—he was the bringer of gladness.

“Because he wrought in an atmosphere of joy, his life was peculiarly fruitful and helpful. The record of what he accomplished is indeed amazing. I do not hesitate to say that only a happy man could do so much so well. And that same joyous spirit made him a welcome guest at every fireside and in every heart. What a delightful companion he was! How many thousands who never saw his face have nevertheless found in his pictures and his books that bright companionship! Is there anything which the world needs so deeply or welcomes so heartily as such a messenger of hope and cheer?

“In another respect this life was a boon to us. It was a simple and sincere life, frankly and fully expressive of character. Many good and dear people are so reserved or so disguised that their nearest friends do not know them truly. And when we meet them, some day, in the land where we shall know as we are known, we shall have to make acquaintance with them anew, on the basis of the revelation of their real selves. But some there are, whose lives express their souls. Heaven can only make more radiant in them the features that we know already. Will Gibson will be ‘Our Will’ forever, as he is ours to-day, though death has clothed the dear face in the strange, new ‘light that never was on land or sea.’ God be thanked for a transparent life!

“But transparent does not mean shallow. This life was deep and strong, because it was a life of all-embracing love and sympathy, and carried the volume and energy of that spirit, receiving also in return, to swell its own current, the tributary recognition of a wider realm than that of the human race. We indeed loved him, as he loved us; but there are many, thank God! of whom so much can be said. The same principle is exhibited by few in their relations to the non-human world of life; and when we see its manifestations, we are astonished or incredulous. I could tell you many stories of the magnetic attraction which this true lover exerted over wild creatures.

“I remember that once, when Dr. Lyman Abbott was visiting him here in Washington, he pointed out a little brown bird in a tree, just over his head, and while he talked, in his own charming enthusiastic way, about the markings of its plumage, reached up into the tree, took the bird from the bough, held it in his hand to illustrate his impromptu lecture, and then replaced it, unharmed and unaffrighted, upon its shady perch.

“Perhaps that bird, dwelling near his home, knew him already. But there could be no such explanation of the incident which occurred far from here, when Mr. Gibson, sitting with friends on a hotel piazza, called their attention to a humming-bird, hovering over the flowers before them, and saying, ‘Would you like to see him nearer?’ put out his hand, and the little creature, who would scarcely light on a blossom, rested upon the finger of his new friend, and submitted to the inspection of human eyes. Mr. Gibson was himself amazed at this proof of spontaneous trust.

“He used to tell, with a sort of thankful awe, how one day, in Brooklyn, he went through crowded, noisy streets to register his name as a voter, in one of those barren, unattractive places which are ordinarily rented by the State for this temporary purpose; and how, as he stood there in a group of men, waiting for his turn, a white dove flew in from the street, circled round the dingy room, alighted upon his shoulder, received with murmuring delight his caresses, and then flew out. No one knew whence it came or whither it went.

“And he told also, how once he went into the Brooklyn Library, to examine a colored plate, representing a certain butterfly, which he wished to reproduce in illustration of an article; and how, as he stood with the book open before him, in the dim little corner-alcove which used to be the office of his friend Mr. Bardwell, the librarian, a butterfly of that very species fluttered around the great hall into the alcove, and, hovering above his head, dropped at last upon the book, and folded its wings by the side of its own pictures.

“We smile at such coincidences; but the fact that they happen over and over again to one man suggests a coincidence beyond a mere accident—a coincidence of life with life and love with answering love. Indeed, what do we know of these wild creatures that surround us, and seem to be drawn so easily to some of us? What have we done to lead us to know them? We ignore them, or we chase and trap and slay them, or we imprison them and play with them for our own amusement. How would it be if we truly and unselfishly loved them?

“The apostle represents the whole creation as groaning and travailing in pain, waiting for some new manifestation of the human children of God. And the last word of our Master bids us go into all the world and tell the glad tidings, not merely to every man, but to ‘every creature.’ Is there not, then, an evangel of joy for those humbler companions of mankind? When men shall have advanced so far as to cease hating and oppressing one another, may they not still advance to a true sympathy with all living things? And would not that make indeed a new heaven and a new earth, populous with friendships? Of such a joyous consummation, men like our brother whose life we celebrate to-day are prophets and forerunners. Thank God for them!

“And they may also encourage us to stimulate a love of nature in our growing children. We, who have formed our habits of human exclusiveness, cannot say to ourselves in momentary enthusiasm, ‘Let us be as Will Gibson was! Let us begin at once to cultivate the acquaintance of all living things!’ We have outgrown the art. We stand embarrassed in the presence of a squirrel or a bird, and, far from knowing how to attract it, are fain to be satisfied if, by doing nothing at all, we avoid scaring it. But our children, rightly encouraged, may develop unsuspected powers of sympathy. In the great blessing which Mr. Gibson’s work conferred upon us all, the dear old Master of the Gunnery, who cherished into flame the spark of his first inspiration, lived, and still lives, to see the reward of his own loving labors.

“But in another and yet higher aspect, this life was a precious gift to us by virtue of its strong support to our faith in immortality. If all men died in old age, and by slow decay of strength and faculty, it might be hard to imagine the new birth and new beginning which should rejuvenate them. But when a vigorous, full life is withdrawn from our sight in the prime of its power, the very momentum of it carries our faith forward with it. It is like an arrow, shot towards the forest by a strong-armed archer. Has it ceased to move because, in swift mid-flight, it enters the shadow and we suddenly lose sight of it?

“‘The avalanche that has slid a mile will not stop for a tombstone!’

“Still another hint of immortality—and a truer one—is given by the character developed in earthly life. Science, it is true, affords us, as yet, no demonstration of a future life. Perhaps we shall always rest for that truth, as we do to-day, upon the word of our Lord, who went and came so easily between the two chambers of the Father’s house. Yet science has done much in these later times to illuminate His declaration. It has hinted to us a God, patient and tender through the ages of ages, carrying the world upon His bosom and nursing its slow growth, from stage to stage, through crystal, cell, and soul, that He might at last fill the spaces immeasurable with loving and beloved human souls, as dear companions of Himself. He cannot afford, it seems to us, to destroy perpetually the fairest fruits of this long preparation. They have lain upon His heart and felt the pulse-beat of the Universe. He is no Arabian tyrant, to slay them one by one, every morning. Having loved His own, He loves them to the end, and beyond the seeming end—for love is immortality. Our brother, who knew and loved every one of God’s trees on these hills of Washington,—shall he not have access to the Trees of Life, that grow by the River of Life? Shall his spirit, attuned already to the divine harmonies of earth, be dumb amid the songs of heaven? Nay; such completed souls declare the Life Eternal, echoing to us the Master’s word of hope: ‘I live; and because I live, ye shall live also!’

“For this life of his was already a life with God. You will not misunderstand me, if I say little of that part of his religious experience which is common to all believers, or of that part of his work which we technically call Christian work. It is not because I undervalue repentance, faith in Jesus Christ, or communion and co-operation with His visible church on earth. Still less is it because I need to make out, in

behalf of one who found his religion in nature and science and art, a claim to be considered as religious in some exceptional and peculiar way. I could dwell on Mr. Gibson’s earnest labors as a member of our Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, as an officer of one of our mission-schools, as a leader of its prayer-meetings, and as a hearty supporter of all its social and religious enterprises.

“Nor shall I speak of what he was to his dearest, in the household. Some of us are better at home than abroad; some of us are less attractive to those who know us best. I can only say of him, that his bright, warm, transparent nature was the same inside his house as out of it; only, they who knew him best received more radiance and inspiration than others. I bid them join in our thanksgiving most heartily, who have been most highly blest. Every stone in this beautiful dwelling, every picture on its walls, every fairer picture seen through its windows, bears perpetual witness of his presence and influence. And in more real and immediate truth, his spirit abides and will abide here. I know it was said, ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.’ But that was said in the old, old days, before the light celestial had broken through the valley of the shadow of death. Now we hear a Voice, saying, ‘Not as the world giveth, give I. What I give, I take not away!’

“But turning from these views, without underrating them, I wish to emphasize, in addition to his love and service in church and home, Mr. Gibson’s peculiar communion with God in nature.

“Years ago, his studio here in Washington was in the same house with the study of Mr. Turner, then pastor of the church. It was a happy association for both, and gave rise to many a mutual confidence. And yesterday, talking over with me the experience of those days, Mr. Turner spoke a deep, true word when he said, ‘I always felt concerning Mr. Gibson that he walked with God.’

“We are accustomed to think of those saints whose communion is close with God that they sit and meditate, or kneel and pray, or in some way withdraw themselves from distracting sights and sounds, in order to be alone in the Divine presence. Perhaps we do not conceive of walking with God as one would walk with the owner of a great estate, and hear him tell what he had done or meant to do with this field or that. We forget, perhaps, that God is in His world, and that whoso would keep company with Him must find Him there.

“It was of Enoch that it was first said, ‘He walked with God’; and in the ‘Book of Enoch,’ which was so popular a book in the time of Christ, and is quoted in the New Testament, the patriarch is in fact represented as guided by God upon a journey through the universe. It was thus that our friend walked with God.

“Amen! So may we walk with God!”

Other tributes were no less appreciative, and may serve as side-lights upon his inner and personal life. They show how he impressed many men and many minds, in various and yet concurrent ways. Mr. Clarence Deming, speaking to the friends and graduates of the “Gunnery” school, emphasized the traits in which he was a type of the best forces inherited from his early training.

“And so to-night it is not Gibson the writer, Gibson the nature-lover and nature-hunter, and Gibson the artist, whom we should be recalling, so much as Gibson the man; and the thought persistently comes back to me over and over again that he was our greatest Gunnery boy, not merely in reputation before the world, not by virtue of pen and brush, but by the fact that he was the perfect and consummate product of the old Gunnery scheme of education, and a kind of analogue of Mr. Gunn himself. If there was one thing sought by Mr. Gunn most strenuously it was the seeding in a boy of those qualities which in him, as man, should fruit into that grandest trait expressed in the English tongue by the word character. It is a subtle term, hard to define and to expound. I can, perhaps, call it the power in man compounded by nerve force, habit, and conscience which makes him fearlessly righteous and sets him among his fellow-men in organized society as a living and forceful influence, ever active for things good.

“Now, I repeat, it is on that phase of Gibson’s personality and life work that I love to think, and to recall him as our loftiest incarnation of Gunnery character. He, perhaps, lacked the initiative force of Mr. Gunn, but when it came to the test of principle not even our old master surpassed the pupil. Do you remember how outspoken Gibson was when it came to any question of wrong? Do you recall how no form of trickery or meanness, either in individual conduct or in public life, failed to meet his contempt and his scorn? What one of us, in that life of his, passed, so much of it, in this community, can put the finger on one questionable word or act? When we can pay such tribute to a departed friend, I care not what his genius may have been, how far and wide his fame may have blown, or how long the mere work of hand and brain may endure, he has builded a monument set firmer than granite or marble in the service of his generation, and of the generations to come.

“That strong character of Gibson revealed itself to me in many ways. In politics, for example, his path and my own on national questions often diverged. Yet in talks with him on that subject, most impressive was the revelation of his bed-rock sincerity of conviction; and never did that conviction fail to be enthused with the profoundest patriotism of motive. Take a somewhat narrower civic question, that of municipal reform, a theme as to which by the nature of personal vocation I have heard many men and met many and varied views. But never have I found a man who discussed that topic more intelligently, more broadly, and more often striking the keynote of progress than Gibson, whom the public and not a few friends, doubtless, have associated only with the hunt for nature’s secrets in the flower, the leaf, and the marvels of insect life.

“Or let us take one other outward expression of that strong public character of his. It was a primal motif in such a man to love the simplicities, and you will all remember as one vivid phase of it his intense desire to preserve the sweet and unaffected community life which has so long marked this village. He had seen how the wave of fashion and of assertive and ostentatious wealth had overcast those New England towns for which nature had done most, and how the supreme triumph of the French modiste, the babble of the four-o’clock tea, and the vanities of so-called ‘good’ society had come to satirize the summer charms of mountain and river and vale. Hence that aggressive desire of his, expressed alike in word and act, to conserve in their old simplicity and freedom the customs which we as Gunnery boys enjoyed in this gracious village. Though he be dead, that example and precept of his yet appeal to us.

. . . . . .

“Many years ago it was my good fortune to be present in Westminster Chapter House at a meeting to open a fund for a memorial to Dean Stanley. Among the speakers was James Russell Lowell, then our minister at St. James’s, and he referred to an epitaph in a Boston churchyard as descriptive of Dean Stanley’s character. That epitaph was simply, ‘He was so pleasant.’ Many times have I reflected how well that idea described one large side of Gibson’s nature. ‘He was so pleasant,’ so jocund, so genial, so appreciative of humor. One outward token of the trait familiar to us all was his quick grasp of the funny things to be found in this rural New England of ours. We know—and by ‘we’ I mean especially those of us in middle life or beyond—what a wealth of oddity in phrase and habit our country New Englanders have amassed. Time was when each Yankee village had its quaint and curious characters, but now, with education and contact with the world, they are dying away, and the next generation will see few or none save as they survive in literature. In personal forms Gibson rescued from oblivion many of those characters who went into his books, but the draft was small on his collection of Yankee epigram and oddity which never reached the types. I can see him in memory now, with his rich gift of mimicry, repeating the bucolic joke, or, may be, in smiling silence listening at the post-office as the country sage expounds his original views from the bema of the barrel-head.

“Of Gibson’s sweet home life, of his love of wife and family, of his kind hospitality, of his sacred personal friendships, it is not for me to speak in detail here. Suffice it to say that they rounded out with rare and beautiful symmetry that splendid life of his as artist, writer, prose-poet, investigator, good citizen, and man. In this village of his love, so endeared to him as summer home, and from which, as a Gunnery boy, he drew so much of moral inspiration and strength, no vain words of mine need voice him, nor can language of tongue or pen measure the void which he has left behind. Washington, indeed, is not the same with Gibson gone, and has but the sad boon of still clasping him, mother-like, on the green slope which looks off to the valley of the sunset shadows which he loved so well. We miss, yet meet him, in every nook, in the waving tree-tops, the swaying flower by the rippling stream, in the butterfly that flits by in the sunlight. How well with trifling verbal change do those lines of Whittier fit our loss: