ACADEMY OF SCIENCES] ^g j^grp, EIGHT YEARS 279 



No. 5] 



PERSONAL INCIDENTS 



After the experience on the water at Annisquam Gilbert was led to take up his old exercise 

 of canoeing on the Potomac during the winters in Washington, especially when a congenial com- 

 panion could be found who paddled well and who did not talk too much or too little. Among 

 others, the topographer, W. D. Johnson, and the petrographer, J. P. Iddings, are both mentioned 

 as possessing the desired measure of dexterity and conversation, but his companions were not 

 always geologists. Cards, dominoes, and billiards continued to be favorite indoor recreations, 

 even to the point of playing in tournaments at the Cosmos Club. Concerning one such competi- 

 tion in March, 1914, he wrote: 



I am in the finals at billiards. My average run in the 14 games of the first round was 1.43. Have played 

 one game and lost it. 4 more to play. 



But the competition of tournaments demanded more effort than he coidd easily give, and in 

 the final round he was defeated. He still enjoyed rhyming and guessing games; one that was 

 called "positive, comparative, superlative" consisted in inventing definitions from which words 

 like urn, earner, earnest, were to be guessed. 



Gilbert was always an active reader, not alone of scientific articles but also of magazines 

 and newspapers, and of such books as Crothers's Essays, the delicate humor of which has been 

 well said to "make the mind laugh." He had the habit of marking magazine articles that he 

 liked and sending them to his friends, that they might be enjoyed twice for one printing. In ways 

 like this he was always doing little kindnesses that made for happiness, and so generously as to 

 produce no sense of obligation. To some of his correspondents he had a way of inclosing news- 

 paper clippings; cryptic American jokes especially appealed to him. One such may be here 

 included for future historians to work out; it was taken from a jocose essay on Arizona, published 

 shortly after the Republican presidential convention of 1912: "The Roosevelt Dam is the biggest 

 thing of its kind west of Chicago." Reading aloud was stdl, as it long had been, a favorite occu- 

 pation when the hours of writing and exercise were over. In 1912 one of his letters written in the 

 simplified spelling adopted in his later years revealed a characteristic consequence of this form of 

 entertainment : 



We have recently finisht "The Broad Highway" and found it intensely interesting toward the end. At 



the pathetic places and I had to use our handkerchiefs, but the women laft — at us. I suppose they hav 



red so many novels they are callous. Or do they illustrate the peculiar "dullness" of the female of the species? 



In spite of the misogynist-like disrespect shown in the last inquiry, Gdbert was ' ' adored " by 

 many younger members of the half of the species there referred to, and was furthermore a great 

 favorite with the children of certain households where he was a not infrequent inmate. To them 

 he did not take the part of the serious scientist, but showed only the playful and affectionate side 

 of his nature. The small son in a friend's fanuly conceived so great fondness for him that he 

 made a special addition to his evening prayer in behalf of the tall visitor: "O Lord, bless father 

 and mother and Mr. Gilbert and some ladies." It is often recorded that eminent men are fond 

 of children, but it is seldom that testimony so spontaneous as this is presented to show the fond- 

 ness of children for eminent men. But in spite of his own enjoyment of dancing parties in his 

 early years in Washington, Gilbert did not in his later years find himself in sympathy with the 

 round of gaiety in which the grown-up children of that time were engulfed. In 1914 he wrote: 



The girls [not specifying which girls he referred to] are whirling giddily — dances, teas, card parties, calls, and 

 a charity spectacle of some sort. I'm truly sorry for them, but they don't know enuf to be sorry for themselves. 



What is known as "Society" never had any attraction for him, and in his older age it repelled 

 him. It is told that when his evening suit had become somewhat worn, he refused to order 

 another and used the lack of one as a convenient excuse for not attending "functions." 



Sometimes, as if unmindful of the advance made by certain young relatives from uncon- 

 scious girlhood to self-conscious young ladyhood, he failed to realize the enormous importance 

 that the proprieties of life thereby gained in their eyes. Two of these personages would surely 

 be pleased to know that in the "summary" for 1914 in his long-continued series of diaries, he 

 regarded the record: "Effie and Edith visited Washington, Feb. 2-5," as important enough 

 to be entered under the "Events" of the year; just as they must surely have been gratified 



