CHAPTER XXI 

 PERSONAL RELATIONS: 1891-1900 



COLLEGE LECTURES 



Gilbert's career as a college lecturer began in the eighties and culminated in the nineties. 

 His first opportunity was at Cornell University in 1887, when he spoke twice on " Geological 

 field work." Five years later it was proposed, as has already been told, to secure his appoint- 

 ment there as professor of geology, but he decided not to leave the survey. While he was con- 

 sidering this offer, which evidently attracted him, he seemed to have some fear that the geologi- 

 cal market might be overstocked with young graduates, and wrote to one of those whom he 

 had consulted in the matter: 



Perhaps if I go to C. I would better limit my ambition to liberalizing the education of future preachers, 

 doctors and engineers. 



After the decision to remain in Washington had been reached, he wrote again to the same 

 correspondent: 



On the whole I am glad the talk of a professorship has talked itself out. The pros did not weaken with a 

 closer view but the cons grew stronger. Several geological friends gave me Punch's advice and only one ad- 

 vised me to swap horses. The discussion has brought out the strong points of the horse now under the saddle 

 and has made them actually a little stronger. 



This was written about two months before the disaster of 1892; had the offer from Cornell 

 been made half a year later, who can say what the outcome might have been! 



It will be recalled that Gilbert had been offered and had declined a professorship at Brown 

 University nearly 20 years before; and it may be at once added that he was asked to take a 

 temporary appointment at Harvard University for the year 1898-99, during the absence of 

 one of the staff in Europe; but he declined this invitation also, chiefly on the ground that the 

 labor of removal from Washington for so short a time and the preparation of the many lectures 

 called for would be too heavy a burden. How many other similar offers he received is not 

 known; but the one from Cornell evidently was the most tempting to him. During the last 30 

 years of his hfe he repeatedly advanced small sums of money, chiefly on the advice of his friends 

 in Ithaca, to needy Cornell students on the condition that the advance should be repaid without 

 interest as soon as the recipient became self-supporting. He held to this condition not only 

 because the money could then be used over again, but also because he felt it better for the 

 recipient to feel a responsibility for repayment, an opinion that is shared by many educators. 

 On his death he left a thousand dollars to be personally administered as a revolving fund for 

 Cornell students under similar conditions. 



To return to college lectures: In 1S91 Gilbert spoke at Johns Hopkins University on 

 Niagara; in the following year he addressed the Peabody Institute of Baltimore on the same 

 subject and on the moon. It was in the closing months of 1892, just after the survey disaster, 

 that he gave a course of lectures to the teachers of Washington on " Making and remaking the 

 surface of the earth"; and this course appears to have been repeated, as already told, in Janu- 

 ary, 1894, under the auspices of the 'National Geographic Society, with the title, "The shaping 

 of the earth's surface." Near the end of the same year he spoke at Cornell University on the 

 Ontario basin. 



His first long educational course consisted of 12 lectures on physical geography at the 



School of Mines of Columbia University in January and February, 1893, and during that time 



he had leave of absence from survey duties. It may interest future generations of economists 



as well as of geologists to know that he received $1,000 for this effort. It may also interest 



future generations of New Yorkers to know that he wrote to a friend at the conclusion of the 



course: "I enjoyed my lectures and would gladly have given a few hours more because the 



time was short for my subject — or subjects. Not being much acquainted in New York and 



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