One could add to these indefinitely. A minister in the northwest, a lover of flowers and a true woodsman, has a fine program for a canoeing trip on Minnesota rivers and lakes; a farmer’s wife writes to ask direction to some simple manual which will help her copy flowers in color, and encloses some examples of her simple work; an admiring poet sends some verses which will not scan, and will be glad to have her adulations published,--and remuneration secured; another admirer insists that he is not an autograph fiend,--but he _would_ like a letter in reply to his praises; an impecunious poet suggests an immediate loan of ten dollars; a mother in a western state sends some admirable sketches done by her daughter and wishes his judgment upon their merits. People felt his kindly nature in his writings and in his pictures. It was a virtue that went out of him, and drew like a loadstone. Nowhere, perhaps, outside the charmed and privileged circle of the “Gunnery” boys,--they were always “boys” and “girls” to one another!--was he more welcome or more warmly cherished than at the Authors Club. He counted it a great honor to be chosen into that favored circle, and as he was one of its earliest members, so he was one of its most constant and loyal supporters. Whenever he could he joined in its social conclaves and its decorous revels; and his presence was always a guarantee of good fellowship, unconstrained, talkative, and sparkling. In the earliest home of the Club in East Fifteenth St.; in its rooms in West Twenty-fourth St.; later in the West Twenty-third St. quarters; and finally in the soaring apartments to which it attained, Gibson’s was one of the familiar figures, as it was one of those most commonly sought out of strangers. But it was never a figure with “a certain solitariness,” as seen by his imaginative critic. Wherever Gibson sat or stood, there was sure to be a group. Men gathered about him as birds flock to the banks of a rippling stream. Nor was he any slower in coming to the side of others. He sought companionship as frankly as he gave it. He was always running over with bright, attractive talk; but he had a willing ear. He was conscious of his power to attract; but it never bred in him the slightest condescension toward others. He was passionately fond of wit, and humor, and all the honest fun of life; but he never showed a particle of coarseness, and he never confounded fun with foulness. He was as much at home with the largest minds and characters as he was with the simple farmers and rustics, he delighted to describe; for he met all men on the ground of their common brotherhood, [Illustration: _The Edge of the Woods_ _From a Painting_]