fAuk 



24 Gehring, William Brewster: An Appreciation. [j" n 



WILLIAM BREWSTER — AN APPRECIATION. 



BY JOHN GEORGE GEHRING. 



To appear before this body of Nature Lovers in an attempt to 

 pay loving tribute to the memory of such a man as William Brewster, 

 many of you having had your own relations of intimate friendship 

 with him for years and some from boyhood, might seem like an 

 intrusion under ordinary circumstances; but the circumstances 

 are not ordinary when it is William Brewster of whom I speak! 

 We all knew him to be a man of a wonderfully rich and many-sided 

 character, — and we all know that to merely say how we loved him 

 and shall always revere him, does not lift the weight of an irrepar- 

 able calamity that has befallen us. Nevertheless it seems impera- 

 tive as well as a precious privilege that I, at his own request, may be 

 permitted, through your Journal, to give expression to what lies in 

 my own heart. 



On the eleventh day of last July William Brewster breathed out 

 his last earthly hour in his tree-embowered chamber in his home 

 in Cambridge. During the last weeks of his final illness it was my 

 great privilege to be many hours by his side, to listen to his words, 

 to return the glances of his friendly and trusting eyes, and to min- 

 ister to him with such little attentions as one who loves his dearest 

 friend, whom he is about to lose out of his earthly life, eagerly 

 desires to bestow. 



Through all those swiftly passing days the voices of his beloved 

 birds came through the open windows of his chamber, and spoke to 

 him through the ever-receptive senses of his bird-loving soul. 

 Almost to the last conscious hour the notes of the robins never failed 

 to elicit a recognition or some sign of pleasure. Indeed, to the 

 sympathetic few who hovered around him, even after he had ceased 

 to be perceptive of the environment of the room and his friends, 

 it seemed that there still remained open the door that led to his 

 love for the birds, for he ever appeared to be conscious of their 

 movements and their notes, and often his countenance would faintly 

 lighten with the recognition of their calls after he had become too 

 feeble to utter words. 



