But the time had come which was to put his earnestness and force to the test. His father’s death in 1868 had made it necessary that he should hasten to choose a career and begin his self-support. Few young men are “called” to any special work in life; fewer still “elect,” of their own free will, the thing they will do because it is the thing they must do, beyond a doubt. And Gibson began by showing himself no different from other youth; he was to discover his distinction later. For no particular reason, save that it was suggested to him by a business friend and adviser of whom he sought counsel, he took up life-insurance, and became an agent for a leading company of his time. It gives one a strange feeling of incongruity to read the little business card, bearing the title of the “Home Life Insurance Company,” announcing “Wm. H. Gibson, General Agent, 103 Fulton Street, Brooklyn,” with “Office hours, 9 to 10.” One thinks of Nathaniel Hawthorne in the custom-house at Salem; of Charles Lamb at his clerk’s desk in East India House; and experiences a deep sense of relief that this new genius had the grace and the strength to escape from an uncongenial pursuit and follow the urgings of his own spirit. The business had no attractions for the boy. He wanted to draw. He was yearning after open fields and wide horizons. There was a craving in his nature which was at once an outcry for a life of self-utterance by the means and methods of art, and a protest against a life spent in what is called, with cool disparagement of other pursuits, “business.” The young man felt that the one career would mean self-expression, with all its joy, its power, its peace; while the other would be a self-repression, continual, galling, paralyzing. He was born to be a student of nature and to tell her story to the men and women who had not his endowment. The hour had come in which he was to decide whether he could heed his call, believe in himself, choose the path which invited him to labors that fitted his nature, and dare all its difficulties for the sake of being true to his own soul. The situation was not new. It is no unusual thing for young men to waver between such rival purposes. But the interest of such a crisis never wanes. It is always a trial of the real stuff and fiber of the individual. It is an experience which the youth must bear alone. But the gain belongs to all men when the decision is made which seals a life to devotion to its own highest ideal.