“He would picture the clouds and the mists, the mountain-tops arresting the fogs and condensing them with its ledges; the little springs which run among the hills, the river’s cradle among the rocks, the tiny brook descending over the desolation of the heights, the brooklet entering the forest, the mossy coverts, the fern-covered banks, the shadowing trees, the twisting, turning stream, winding downward amidst tawny rocks, jumping over cataracts and falls, then emerging into the lower pasture slopes, with cattle drinking at its banks, and then the meadows with great sweeping branches of overhanging trees, the vexing wheels of mills, the larger and larger river, and then the city with its grime, and beyond, the sea, with its mighty ships sailing to far Cathay. And how his wondrous eyes, which had the luminousness but never the passion of the flame, used to glow as he talked of Nature and of the secrets that she told him and of the apostleship he held to make the great world see and love Nature with something of his idolatry. He kept the gladness of his youth and was never won away from the paths in which his boyish feet had strayed. That wondrous picture-making period of boyhood ever held his soul in thrall. He lived in the city, for he was the busiest worker among men, but the roots of his heart were tangled with the grasses of the sunlit pastures where his youth had been. When the sun’s rays lengthened over the noisy city, with the swiftness of the arrow’s flight from a Tartar’s bow he sought the old scenes, and there at length when favoring fortune came, he built his home, and when death wanted him she sought him there, and there she found him.”
The minute prepared for the Century Club of New York City was more than a perfunctory record, and witnesses to the high esteem in which the members held him:
“William Hamilton Gibson, distinguished alike as an artist, an author, and an illustrator, had risen by unwonted industry, native talent, and a tireless enthusiasm to a high place in the esteem of the lovers of nature and the admirers of true art. He was recognized as an artist with the pen as well as with the pencil, and entitled to a place among those enthusiastic naturalists who have the skill in words to impart their enthusiasm. His ‘Highways and Byways,’ ‘Pastoral Days,’ the ‘Heart of the White Mountains,’ ‘Nature’s Serial Story,’ ‘Camp Life in the Woods,’ ‘Trapping and Trap Making,’ ‘Happy Hunting Grounds,’ and many other books, all illustrated by himself, showed his scientific exactitude and his artistic quality. His illustrated article in the last number of ‘Harper’s Magazine’ seems like a farewell message from him in another world. He was also a noted water-colorist, and, in later years, a popular lecturer on natural history.
“His facility of expression and ingenious illustration of his subject by his crayon and mechanical appliances instructed and entertained his audiences, and no man had appeared in this field since Agassiz with such success as met him. There was a charm in his personality from the earnestness and kindliness of his nature, and the number of those who mourn his early death is not confined to his personal friends alone.
“Pleasant and unfading memories mingle with our regrets at parting with those whose names are recorded here. They were men without exception worthy, true, and of good report. May we not say, as their survivors, and conscious of our failings—
“‘Our lives are albums written through,
With good or ill, with false or true,
And as the blessed angels turn
The pages of our years,
God grant they read the good with smiles
And blot the ill with tears.’
“Henry E. Howland,
”Secretary.
“Century Club House,
“New York, January 9th, 1897.”
Other phases of his versatile spirit are noted by Mr. Alexander Black:
“I first met Mr. Gibson at the Authors Club in the old rooms on Twenty-fourth Street. At that time he was a regular attendant at the meetings, and he remained among the faithful until his lectures began. Thereafter he came, I fancy, whenever he was free to come, and found a stimulating enjoyment in meeting his fellow-craftsmen, literary and artistic, with whom at all times he had a hearty frankness of cordiality that made him an always-welcome figure in this singularly democratic group. At times I found him pulling at a ‘long Tom,’ generally, as he put it, ‘in self-defense,’ for we hovered in a deep fog of smoke. After I myself had been elected to the Club (in 1888) we met regularly in this literary aerie, and endured in common the recurrent jest inflicted upon those who, at two A.M., still had to make a homeward journey to Brooklyn,—an infliction which fell lightly upon me when I had his company to the Bridge, and could hear him talk of the flowers and their insect visitors, or the current movements of art.