The latter of the two was the first to be decided. It was at this period of his life that the boy experienced one of those changes in disposition, which was like the awakening or the sudden unfolding of the real self, hitherto hidden under apparently opposite traits. While he was at the Gunnery, Gibson had troubled the soul of his teacher, as we have seen, because he had not, as Mr. Gunn put it, “learned to be spontaneously industrious.” But during the years immediately following, while he was yet at the Polytechnic, he “came to himself.” He had been an easy-going boy, rather indolent in habit, or at least deficient in the power of industrious, persevering application. But now he began to show a love of work, to love it for its own sake, to plan it, and to seek it of his own volition. He took a vigorous hold upon his studies at the Polytechnic. He found a new delight, as well as a sustained, deep-seated interest in his drawing. He took up a new pursuit, to which he devoted his spare hours to such good purpose that he mastered it in astonishingly little time, and carried it to a high point of skill. Chancing to see some wax-flowers made by an expert of his time in Brooklyn, he promptly decided that the art was one which he could master. After some essays of his own, he put himself under the instruction of this teacher, who soon told the boy that he could teach him no more. There are some wonderful stories floating down from those days concerning the work he did in this medium, so fine in its imitative perfection as to deceive the very elect. One, in particular, is to the effect that a cluster of blossoms which he had modeled and carried, as a gift, to Mr. Beecher’s home, stood upon a table in a little vase when Mrs. Beecher saw it for the first time. She took up the vase, and, raising it to inhale the fragrance which it promised, had crushed the delicate work before she discovered the illusion. Apocryphal or not, the story shows the impression his work made upon his early admirers.