140 GROVE KARL GILBERT— DAVIS [MEU0,BS [v N o A i!xxt 



to his profound grief his little daughter, Bessie, whom he "loved more than anyone else in the 

 world," died of diphtheria, May 8, 1883, in her seventh year. A short time afterwards the 

 father, mother, and aunt were attacked by the same disease, then so much dreaded, but all 

 recovered. Gilbert's recovery must have been slow, for a burden of grief at the loss of his 

 daughter weighed upon him. He went to Virginia the following summer for a month's rest 

 alone in the country. It was probably to this painful period that he alluded, when talking 

 years afterwards with a friend to whom he confided many intimate matters, as a time in which 

 he had "fought out" certain questions of inmost religious belief; but on such subjects he rarely 

 spoke to anyone. 



A touching allusion to the death of the little daughter is found in one of his letters written 

 many years later to his elder son. He briefly mentions seeing "a quiet little girl of Bessie's 

 age," thus showing that she remained a child in his memory, although she would then, if living, 

 have been a middle-aged woman. It is always so when the young die; more fortunate than 

 the Sibyl who escaped death at the heavy cost of growing very, very old, children on dying 

 preserve a long-lasting youth in the hearts of their parents. A still later memorial of the sad 

 summer of 1883 was found in Gilbert's will, a paragraph of which read: 



I bequeath to Emma Dean Powell, widow of the late John W. Powell, the sum of one thousand dollars 

 in loving remembrance of her great kindness to me and mine in time of need. 



The cause of this bequest appears to be that, the time of Bessie Gilbert 's fatal illness being 

 before the modern era of professional nursing, the care of the little sufferer was shared by 

 members and friends of the family. Her father watched by her bedside untd loss of sleep 

 made him distrust Ms capacity to give her proper attention, and Major Powell's wife was one 

 of those who relieved him when he was exhausted. 



It was at a somewhat earlier date that the prolonged ill health of Gilbert's wife began. 

 Its first impairment, attributed to coal-gas poisoning which affected all the family, but the 

 mother most severely, was not so serious as to interfere greatly with the usual course of home 

 life; this was indeed stabilized in October, 1883, by the purchase of a house, 1424 Corcoran 

 Street. As the father's salary, even when supplemented by the installments of an inheritance 

 which his wife had received from her mother, was not greatly in excess of the family expenses, 

 a good part of the cost of the house was left on mortgage; but the mortgage was steadily reduced 

 by annual payments and canceled in 1886. This house continued to be Gilbert's residence 

 until his wife's death, 16 years later, although in the meantime the family was much divided 

 by reason of the father's absences on field work, the mother's illness which sometimes neces- 

 sitated her withdrawal to a convalescent hospital, and the boys' attendance at boarding school. 

 The Corcoran Street house was nevertheless a preferred gathering ground for the neighborhood 

 playmates of the two boys when they were at home, for despite her illness the boys' mother 

 always made the "crowd" welcome. One of them, who still recalls with gratitude the good 

 times he enjoyed there, imagines that the bill for ginger snaps and milk on which the "crowd" 

 was often regaled must have been enormous. 



Each year during the heat of the summer, when Gilbert was absent for longer or shorter 

 periods, Mrs. Gilbert and her sons usually went out of town; to a Virginia village, in 1881; to 

 Asbury Park, N. J., in 1S84 and 1885; to Hamilton, Md., in 1886; to Mount Desert, Me., in 

 1887; and to Rye Beach, N. H, in 1888. In the spring of 1887, Gilbert took up bicycle riding, 

 for which the smooth streets of Washington were well adapted ; and a number of entries in his 

 pocket diary of that year record the hiring of a "Sociable," or two-seated bicycle, on which he 

 and his wife rode together. 



Such was Gilbert's thrift that during the same year in which he finished paying for his 

 house, he made also the last payments on a life insurance policy for $9,000, and yet saved $780 

 at the end of the year. Nevertheless, the margin of income over expenses was frequently 

 narrow; for although a little over $1,000 was saved in one year of exceptional economy, the 

 savings of the next year were reduced to $80 by the cost of repairs on the Corcoran Street house; 

 and a trip to Europe in 1888 left a balance of only $55 at the close of that year. These items 



