“I observe this evening in the current number of the ‘Critic,’ an art reference which calls for a slight correction. In a review of ‘Nature’s Serial Story,’ by E. P. Roe, after paying a delicate compliment to the illustrations of the volume the reviewer goes on to say that, ‘without detracting from the artist’s meed of praise, the most remarkable thing about these illustrations is the extraordinary skill displayed by the engravers.... Mr. Henry Marsh, whose delicacy and precision of touch are marvelous, shows the still rarer power of taking up the theme submitted to him by the artist and adding increment after increment of meaning to it until it becomes almost wholly his own. His engraving of “A Winter Thunder-Storm” is the finest thing in the book. We give the credit to him because we know that Mr. Gibson’s forte is not in landscape.’ “I yield to no one in my admiration of Mr. Marsh not only as a master and a poet in his art, but equally as an esteemed personal friend. Indeed I love him too well, and have too great a respect for his interpretative genius to see attributed to him a piece of work which I am sure he would not care to claim, although it is ‘the finest thing in the book’ and fraught with ‘increment after increment of meaning’ and which is nevertheless nothing but a photo-engraved plate, by a purely mechanical process. Of course the ‘Critic’ (?) will hasten to make all due acknowledgments and place the credit where it righteously belongs, _i. e._, to the Ives Photo-Engraving Company, Phila., Pa., whose admirable process has reproduced not only this, but several others of the illustrations in which the aforesaid alleged marvelous ‘increment’ was discovered. Such is fame! “Shade of Albrecht Dürer! Who are our critics?” Mr. Roe wrote under date of Dec. 29, 1884: “You did indeed win a victory over the ‘incrementitious’ critic. I should think he would wish to crawl into a small hole, and pull the hole in after him. I enjoyed your triumph as much as if it had been my own. It was the neatest thrust under the fifth rib I ever saw, and I fear I shall never have enough of Christian meekness not to enjoy seeing a fellow receive his _congé_ when so well deserved. Dr. Abbott and I took part in the ‘wake’ up here.” Another instance of his trapping the friendly critic is preserved in his correspondence. Colonel Gibson had objected to the “Old Barnyard” as pictured in “Pastoral Days.” “The sloppy slush through which the man is splashing” he wrote, “is almost too faithful. But, my dear fellow,--an apple-tree in a cow-yard!--and loose fence-posts leaning on it!... And do you ever see trees or shrubs on the pond side of a mill?” (referring to the skating scene in the same paper). To which Gibson the artist made answer as follows: