278 GROVE KARL GILBERT— DAVIS tMEM0I Vo™xi; 



In his later years, although his salary was no longer supplemented by pay for lectures at 

 colleges or for work on dictionaries and encyclopedias, his income was above his simple needs 

 and he laid aside a part of it every year. A letter that he wrote to his elder son in June, 

 1912, shows the happy relation existing between the two in financial matters: 



It is perhaps well to repeat my point of view. You and I have become a mutual insurance company, in 

 the sense that either of us if embarrast or broke would call on the other for help. It is better for the joint in- 

 terest that some of my quiet investments be exchanged for more activ investments in your hands. Your 

 investments will have to be on your own judgment, not mine; and I do not care to impose any conditions. I 

 am satisfied that you will not be too speculative. 



It may be added that the father carried through his later years an insurance policy which, 

 after his death, should yield an annuity of $500 for the younger son, Roy, and which, if this 

 son died before the father, should add $20,000 to his estate. 



SUMMERS AT ANISTTSC UAM, 1911, 1912 



Gilbert spent the summers of 1911 and 1912 in a small hotel at Annisquam, a pleasant 

 resort on the Massachusetts coast, where he did a satisfactory amount of writing. A letter to 

 one of his sons describes the simple comforts and pleasures he enjoyed: 



I've been here several days now and am partly set in my room. Have screwed that long box that you 

 drove nails into with its bottom against the wall and am using it as a bookcase — just as at the [Comstock's] 

 Hermitage. And the dinkey stand of the summer hotel room is replaced by a kitchen table — whose unvarnish 

 matches the bookcase. My room is high up in a corner. One window commands the sea, the other the harbor, 

 and the view is fine. For the first time in many years I am living in view of the sunset. 



The position of his hotel was described as — 



one or two stone thros from the water at north and west. Just north is a nice little bathing beach set among 

 granite rocks, and on the west side is a convenient boat livery. I dout if I bathe, but the boats have already 

 been sampled and approved — hevy, stedy, easy-rowing dories". 



In order to prepare for the hours devoted to writing, regular exercise was taken on the 

 water, chiefly before breakfast, and the distance covered was gradually increased from 1 mile 

 to 5; but as rowing alone was found to be too solitary for the best diversion, an experiment 

 was tried and reported upon to the elder son: 



I seem to be the only one [to row] besides the fishermen, and it is a bit lonesome. Tried taking a widow 

 along yesterday, but she talkt too much, and I don't think I'll give her another chance. 



More enjoyment was found in a few salt-water canoe trips, in which his feUow paddler was 

 the geologist Van Hise, president of the University of Wisconsin; and as he had not tried 

 canoeing for some 20 years, he was pleased to find his paddling muscles in trim without special 

 training. 



The second trip was 8 miles . . . and at one point we rode on a full grown Atlantic swell which was making 

 magnificent surf at the shore, a most exhilarating experience. 



Exercise appears to have been combined with observation. 



I've taken up the study of sand ripples, for which the locality is well adapted. It gives a good theme for boat 

 excursions and is somewhat related to my laboratory data. 



And observation appears later to have led to risk: 



My curiosity about sand ripples on a bar led among breakers one morning, and to escape a wetting I pull'd 

 pretty hard for a few minutes, which set the wheels going in my hed and I didn't amount to much for a day or 

 two: all right now. 



A longer but quiet trip was made near the end of the first summer: 



Rowed to Essex river to take some fotos, — especially a drumlin that I wished to get as a type. It rises as a 

 solitary oval hill in the midst of a tidal marsh. My trip was about ten miles long, but I took it in a very leisurely 

 way, being gone over six hours and getting lunch at a farmhouse close to the drumlin. 



A letter written the second summer at Annisquam shows that his eye and mind were still 

 keen for physiographic observation and interpretation: 



The most notable recent variant [from rowing] has been a motor boat excursion to a sound cald Plum Island 

 river, where the topography had features to interest me. I had supposed it proved that this coast is going down a 

 foot or two a century, but all the evidence coming my way these two summers is in the direction of stability. 



