academy o F sciences] GILBERT'S LAST STUDY 303 



clear" of those responsibilities but was "not able to do the cutting." The page closed: "My 



mind will be relieved when I learn you are willing to come This letter means a great 



effort to me." Happily he was more comfortable afterwards. He wrote a little later to his 

 younger son, Roy, and told him of the completion of a fatiguing piece of work: "Your letter 

 came just after I achieved a success with my monthly accounts — making the sum of the credits 

 equal the sum of the debits — but it took a long time in several sessions." The fifty-first of his 

 little pocket diaries contains a few records after he went to the hospital, but they are shorter 

 and shorter as the days pass. April 12: "Unsuccessful attempt to sit up— -too weak." April 

 13: "In wheeled chair a few minutes." April 24: "Emma and I play a rubber of cribbage." 

 April 26: "Arch arrived from Cal." April 27: "Arch and Emma call." April 28: "Arch." 

 Two days later he wrote a farewell letter to a cherished friend, and on May 1 passed quietly 

 away, his sister and his eldest son being with him at the end. 



Gilbert's death occurred five days before his seventy-fifth birthday, in celebration of 

 which, as has already been told, a host of his geological colleagues had written him congratu- 

 latory letters that he never received. It is sad to think that he could not read the many mes- 

 sages of esteem and affection that these letters contained, and it is sad also to know that, great 

 as was his accomplished work, beneficent as his influence had been, his final wish to review and 

 complete one of his earliest and greatest studies was not realized. Nor was his intention to 

 establish himself near San Francisco brought to completion. All plans had been made for the 

 journey across the continent in the spring; a chosen friend was to join him on the way so that 

 he should not go alone to the new home he was to make in California, a home not so far as 

 Washington from the field in which he hoped to work. It was as if, even at the age of three- 

 score and fifteen, he still looked forward to finding a new life beyond the mountains he had so 

 often crossed before. Alas, the companionable journey across the Great Divide was not made; 

 he crossed the Greater Divide alone. 



