“To me you are an interpreter of a word of God which is both older and newer than the one to the interpretation of which I have given my life. You have enabled a vaster congregation than any minister ever speaks to, to see in it a meaning before unseen, if not unsuspected. I am one of your congregation and I am your debtor for lessons, not merely of beauty, but of truth and purity, which cannot be put into words. In interpreting Nature you bring us nearer to God and the eternal beauty and goodness. For this, no less than for the autograph which hangs on our walls Mrs. Abbott and I heartily thank you. “Yours sincerely, LYMAN ABBOTT. “70 COLUMBIA HEIGHTS, _7 April, 1888_.” Gibson was a warm partisan of water-color as a medium of artistic expression. He believed thoroughly in the possibilities of that mode of painting, which, it will be noted, was by no means understood or well-developed in this country when he was beginning to paint. His views in reference to it are well set forth in a letter to his mother, describing his first picture for the Water Color Society’s exhibition, written in the winter of 1874. He says: “I am at present busily engaged on my water-color painting for the coming Spring exhibition. It is only just under way, but all who have seen it express much pleasure and enthusiasm at it and particularly admire my selection of a subject. It would be difficult to find a subject calculated to create such popular favor, and you know that a good selection in this particular is ‘half the battle.’ The idea is this: Subject, a ‘Struggle for Life.’ It is indicated by an old, old tree (an oak if you please) growing under all possible disadvantages, and besieged with a host of parasitic growths which threaten to sap its vitality and hasten its death. The trunk and main portion of a few branches only are shown and but one or two of them are possessed of any leafage. The near portion is devoid of bark and the exposed wood, by the action of the weather without and decay within, has become stained and broken. The interior is hollow, and the rich brown debris of its decomposing wood falls through a large irregular opening at the base of the trunk, and then spreading itself on a moss and lichen covered rock becomes the prey to brilliantly colored fungi and mother to many ferns. The tree is supposed to have started life near a rock and in the course of time its roots have grown over its surface and again by the action of time and other causes are now bare of bark and some of them dead. Higher in the tree, an unsightly gaping hollow presents itself, left after the fall of some dead and useless limb and this, collecting the rain water from each successive shower, has caused the gradual undermining of the tree and hurried it to its approaching death. Close beneath this opening, true to nature, sapping what little life blood still circulates