He had found time during the year for no little study and work in water-color, and even began to essay painting in oils. Despite a long illness of eight months he contributed to several exhibitions and finished a number of new pictures. His goal was always to be a painter. In all the heat of his endeavor and the intoxication of his success he never forgot his ideals, never slackened his march toward the highest art in the most approved forms and mediums. In May, 1883, his first child was born, and he was soon writing to “Dear Mother Gunn,” in answer to her importunate inquiries, all about the new-comer. “Hamilton Gibson then is his name I understand, though not a gift from me, but simply because I have not the heart to refuse anything to my precious wife just now. So she has christened him as above in spite of much foreboding on my part, as to the probable curtailment of his cognomen among the contemporaneous specimens of his genus in the days which will soon be upon us. I have waited so long for this little angel to come, that I hardly dare realize to the full the happiness which has befallen me lest I awake in bitterness to find it all a tantalizing dream.... But ere long I suppose the reality will be brought home to me more effectually,--a few hours’ perambulating in the ‘wee sma’ hours’ every night for a week or two would dispel all doubts or fears, and place the experience on the basis of solid prosaic reality. At present writing, however, I can truthfully say, as every antecedent pa has done, that he is the best baby alive, quiet, absorbent, and somnolent to a degree of perfection which leaves nothing to be desired. Only last night, after taking his meal, (at least that is what I understand they feed him on) he was placed upon his pillow at ten o’clock and slept like a chrysalis till half-past five this morning. During the day to be sure he is not quiescent for quite so long a period, as then nature seems to ‘abhor the vacuum’ more than ever.” The year 1883 was devoted to the illustration of E. P. Roe’s “Nature’s Serial Story,” a work into which he entered with heartiness and sympathy. Much time, too, was given to the preparation of the “Memorial” of Mr. Gunn, a volume issued under the direction of an association of his old pupils, commemorative of his striking personality and of the old days in the school at Washington. This book was finely illustrated by the hand of his loving pupil, who also wrote the introduction which was to have been written by Mr. Beecher, whose death occurred while the [Illustration: _God’s Miracle_ _By permission of the Curtis Publishing Company_]