“You ask me what I do all day. This question is very easily answered. It is the same thing over and over again day after day. The great part of the time I spend in the woods, alone. I start off about ten o’clock in the morning and ramble through the woods and thickets. There is one spot in particular which I frequent the most, because there are two wood-thrushes which invariably come and sing to me. This spot is a singular little dell. It is situated in front of a precipice two hundred feet high, in among ferns and large rocks which are shaded by hemlock trees. It is on these trees that the wood-thrushes sit and chant their songs by the hour. Oh, I do not believe I could be happy if this pleasure were taken away from me. I am always happy alone in the woods. I dare say I am destined to spend half my life in just such places. This is the daily program of the way I spend my time. Silly isn’t it? But I can’t help it. It is my nature to enjoy nature, and I mean to do it at every opportunity.” That outburst struck the keynote of Gibson’s life and spirit. But his love of nature, like his knowledge of it, was broad and catholic. He was not a specialist in any narrow or pedantic sense. He was botanist, ornithologist, entomologist, biologist, all in one. A butterfly had as much interest for him as an evening-primrose, a chipmunk as a nuthatch. Everything was grist that came to his mill. Nothing could better illustrate this universal love of all living things, than a note which he left, on which he intended evidently to base a sketch. Imperfect as it is, it is an admirable illustration of his method and of his broad sympathy and interest. He begins with several experiments at a title, and then outlines his plan; after which he enumerates the “available episodes,” as he calls them, to fill the outline: “‘A Rare Day with the Speckled Trout. Speckled Beauties. A Rare Day’s Trouting.’ See Burroughs’s ‘Speckled Trout,’ Prime’s ‘I go a-Fishing,’ Isaak Walton. “Begin: It was the 29th of June. A glimpse of a large platter of speckled trout, a one day’s catch displayed with pride by a neighbor, revived my old-time zeal and reminded me that there was but one day left in which to beat the record. I consequently start off fully equipped, and meet with an interesting train of episodes, and an accumulation of a basket of specimens,--plants, insects, bird’s nests. Following the course of the stream, the incidents are such as are perfectly appropriate to this setting and the season. A trout occasionally alluded to, as an accessory, jumping, etc. “Or begin with quotation about ‘Not even a minister is to be trusted on the subject of fish.’ Fish stories. I have one to tell which however it may compare with others has at least the merit of truth. It is true that I once caught forty-nine trout, within an hour; but that was not a circumstance to the fortune which has often since befallen me. My last is a fair sample of these lucky days.