“I believe he always retained an affectionate feeling for the Twenty-fourth Street quarters of the Club, where we smoked, ate the Captain’s salad, told stories (Gibson not a poor contributor), seldom talked shop, and certainly never were literary; where we met Lowell, Stedman, Boyesen, Eggleston, Grant White, Godwin, Stoddard, Conway, Jefferson, Riley, Kipling, Mitchell, Hay, St. Gaudens--it would be a long and an interesting list. Mr. Gibson’s genius and personality alike attracted to him the attention of the choicest spirits in a gathering of this kind. He always had a fine fund of that quality which belongs to genius--which is in itself a genius--a quality of youthful enjoyment in the simpler pleasures. I remember the contagious gusto with which, on a certain memorable Watch Night, he told the company a ghost story that came to its crisis in a materialized ghost of his own making which he had concealed under his coat. The hoax recalls some of his fun at Washington village, where his astonishing mummy with a message from the past will long be a droll tradition, and where there is a lively recollection of his dashing horsemanship on a wonderful steed with a feather-duster tail! “I heard him lecture at Washington village and shared in the delight of an audience whose youngest members he held quite as closely as their elders. Indeed, I never have known in any department of science or of art an enthusiast who could convey, with an utter absence of academic formality, so rich and delightful a fund of information and suggestion. To me he was always the ideal interpreter of nature. There was no hint of book covers between. He did not turn to and from his theme at any time. It was part of his life--and plainly a pleasant, unstrenuous part of it. In the woods, in his garden, on the quiet porch overlooking the hillside sumac, he spoke of a discovery in a petal or in the habits of a beetle with that charming undidactic delight of one who assumes that all must have a common pleasure in these phases of natural life. “As an artist he was quite as free from personal mannerisms or eccentricities. When I first visited his studio on Montague street, Brooklyn, he talked as he worked--the picture was an illustration to one of his magazine papers,--and afterwards turned to his portfolio, quite without the effect of entertaining me, but always with a companionly frankness and simplicity that made him at all times the most attractive of hosts. I remember his house studio on Lincoln Place by but two visits, and I had no greater acquaintance with the little crib at the foot of the Washington lawn. I think I liked the dishevelled workshop at Washington best of all.