academy of sc.ENCEs] ANCESTRY AND YOUTH 3 



consciousness the teacher inquired who had pushed him; Karl did not know. Others were 

 then asked the same question, but Karl objected: "Please, sir, don't find out; I don't want to 

 know who did it." "Why not?" said the teacher. "Because I am afraid I should not like 

 him any more." Again, one winter day while the family was living at Irondequoit, about 

 3 miles out of Rochester, Karl went skating, leaving only his sister at home in the absence of 

 both parents; he returned earlier than was expected, and the sister did not learn until years 

 afterwards that Karl had broken through the ice and after some difficulty in getting out and 

 ashore had gone to a near-by house, where clothes were lent him while his own were drying; 

 he had said nothing of all this on returning home. 



There is no reason to believe that the boy made any record of this adventure at the time, 

 but much more of it than the cold plunge remained in his retentive memory, as appears from a 

 letter that he wrote nearly half a century later — in April, 1901 — to the author of an essay 

 on the work of ice in lakes: 



In my boyhood I made an observation on the behavior of lake ice which T have never had an opportunity 

 to repeat since I came to have scientific interest in it. . . . Near my old home at Rochester, N. Y., there is 

 a narrow bay [Irondequoit] separated by a bar from Lake Ontario so as to constitute practically a lake. The 

 sides are so irregular that the width varies from J^ to 1 mile and the length is perhaps 3 miles. One cold day, 

 in skating the length of this bay, I found the ice to be divided by open cracks extending from side to side of 

 the bay. There were perhaps a dozen of them in the whole distance. I do not know the thickness of the ice 

 but it was thick enough to be entirely firm. . . . The cracks were several feet wide as I am able to assure myself 

 by certain details of the day's experience. The wind was blowing and a little snow was drifting. This was 

 caught by the water of the cracks so that each one was marked by a line of wet snow. Usually the line of snow 

 was so well frozen as to bridge the crack and enable me to glide over it, but in some cases, after testing with 

 my "shinny stick, I did not venture to skate across, but retreated so as to acquire speed, making a flying jump. 

 In another case I trusted unwisely to the ice and fell through. These two facts probably indicate [an] extreme 

 width of crack of from 3 to 5 feet. . . . My recollection that the day was cold is supported by the fact that 

 after I had fallen in, my clothes were frozen before I reached the nearest house. The theoretical interest in 

 the phenomena arises from the fact that the ice sheet as a whole seems to have been shortened by cooling. . . . 

 In the direction across the bay the ice could shrink horizontally by merely drawing away from the shore, but 

 lengthwise of the bay it could not shrink in the same manner because held by the irregularities of the lateral 

 coasts. ; ,The shortened length therefore found expression in the cracks. 



This is a remarkably fine example of mature reflection superposed on the vivid recol- 

 lection of a youthful experience; and how delightful it is to think of Gilbert as a boy skating 

 through the wind and making his flying leaps over the cracks in the ice on Irondequoit Bay. 



On another occasion, while the family was still living at Irondequoit, Karl's father was 

 ill, and his mother, alarmed by a serious turn in her husband's condition in the night, called Karl 

 and told him to hurry to the city for the doctor. He set out at once and returned so soon that 

 his mother on seeing him exclaimed: "Why Karl, haven't you started yet?" The boy had run 

 most of the way to the doctor's house and back, about 6 miles, returning with medicine and 

 advice before his mother knew he had set out. 



Karl must have been a studious boy, for when he was only 10 years old, his father received 

 a most gratifying report from the boy's teacher, who polysyllabically said: "His deportment 

 has been unexceptionable, and he has been a most faithful, industrious, and attentive student, 

 meriting in every way my highest approbation." His acquisitiveness and his memory must 

 have been as good as his deportment, as appears from a letter written to one of his sons from the 

 coast of Massachusetts in August, 1912: 



Nothing newer here than that I saw some Mother Carey's chickens this morning, the first I have ever 

 seen. They have a peculiar trick of touching the water with their toes as tho running on it, and I remember to 

 have seen a picture showing the trick when I was a small kid absorbing information from the Penny Magazine. 



This reminiscence is followed by a little sketch, not showing the birds he had seen that 

 morning but reproducing by memory the picture he had seen some 60 years before. 



Although an exemplary scholar, Karl was also fond of boating, for which good opportunity 

 was offered by the Genesee River in its course near Rochester. He and a companion built 

 several small craft for rowing; one boat of flat-bottom model, called the Wave, was so light that 

 it could be " held out at arm's length with one hand." A regatta was planned in 1859, when the 



