CHAPTER XXX 

 THE LAST EIGHT YEARS 



GRADUAL RECOVERY FROM TLLNESS 



Gilbert continued to make his winter home with the Merriams in Washington after his 

 illness as before, and while there worked as steadily as he could on his debris reports untU they 

 were finished. He seemed to enjoy not having to make new arrangements for himself. On 

 returning one year he wrote to a frequent correspondent: 



My niche and my rut were both ready for me and I'm settled in them . . . plodding and loafing in the 

 same old way. 



He avoided geological discussions as too disturbing, and although he occasionally lunched 

 with a group of survey members who in a measure perpetuated the Great Basin mess, he absented 

 himself from all scientific meetings and was heard no more from their platforms. He wrote to 

 his elder son in the spring of 1911: 



The [National] Academy of Sciences has come and gone. I have let it alone — and it let me alone. I 

 hardly saw a member. 



Although he ordinarily gave four or five hours daily and occasionally as many as eight to 

 his manuscripts, even an informal social gathering tired him. In November, 1911, he wrote 

 of a party he had attended: 



There were ten at the supper and the conversation used me up, so that I fled before the party was half over. 

 However, I got my information on limits easily and shall not be tempted to attend any of the sessions or func- 

 tions of the Scientific Societies to come here Christmas week. 



But he seemed pleased when three members of the Association of American Geographers, 

 of which he had been president three years before, called upon him. When alone he was active- 

 minded enough, for shortly before recording the fatigue caused by personal contacts, he de- 

 scribed a "water modulus" of his own devising for the control of the flow into the side canals 

 of an irrigating system, a device which many another would have patented but which he offered 

 "pro bono publico." 



The general notion is as follows — a tapering arm passes thru the opening to supply water from a canal to 

 a distributary. Its position is controlled by a float in such a way that the greater the hed the smaller [the] 

 opening; and the taper is so adjusted that the discharge is constant despite changes in the level of water in the 

 canal. 



It is not known whether the device was ever put to practical use. 



The care of wordly possessions became a burden as age came on, and many of them were 

 wisely disposed of. In 1910, while the illness of the previous year still weighed upon him, 

 Gilbert gave his books and pamphlets to the geological department of Denison University, at 

 Granville, Ohio, where they form the highly prized nucleus of a valuable working library, easily 

 accessible to the students of the department and much consulted by them. In May, 1911, he 

 placed his medals, a list of which will be given later, in public care and wrote of their dis- 

 position to one of his sons in the fight vein he frequently adopted in personal correspondence: 



Today I took my medals to the National Museum. They were to be put in a glass case with other objects 

 of the same class near the entrance to the old building. I took a receipt ("on deposit") which I shall put with 

 my papers in the safe deposit box. So if Roy and you get broke you can escape the poor house for a while by 

 recovering and selling them. There's about $300 worth of gold in them. 



The same feeling that led to the disposal of these possessions made Gilbert disinclined to 

 receive gifts; he went to the point of discouraging his friends from the habit of giving Christ- 

 mas presents by giving very few himself. At the end of 1912 he wrote: "My abstinence in the 

 present business for a few years has had a quieting effect on the incoming stream, and this year 

 only two people have given me things I can not use"; and yet at the end of his diary for the 

 year before is a list of birthdays of some 30 friends and relatives. 



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