I am now in my element and as happy a man as walks the earth at this moment. My future is without a sign of disappointment, and so long as I keep convinced of a present lack of fulfilment of the powers within me, so long am I sure of progress and happiness as far as my work is concerned. My work is so full of faults to me, that I am amazed that others do not see them. So long as I improve I am satisfied and I am greatly gratified that you consider my latest an improvement on the former efforts. “I have just finished a set of drawings for an article to complete the series. It is an ‘Autumn Reverie,’ to appear in October. The drawings are better I think than ‘Springtime.’ The article is yet unborn but exists in chaos in my brain, an immense tangle in which at present it seems impossible to find the loose end. But I shall get hold of it in a few days and it will reel off all right I suppose. This literary work was a strange result of circumstances. I can thank the Gunnery for this also, for it was only after narrating my happy experience at Washington that I was urged to write it up. The article was a success and of course another followed and another, each apparently an improvement, until now I find my literary work at a premium.... “When it comes to extended landscapes I would rather paint them on larger surfaces than a few inches. Don’t count too much on my ‘climbing.’ I have not written much yet. You may yet have the chance, but not if I know it. I have been utterly amazed at the ignorance shown by the people (who are supposed to be writing from the ‘inspiration of Nature’) both in their anachronisms and in their wild ideas about our fauna. Thus in September ‘Harper’s’ will appear five large drawings by me illustrating a poem written by some fellow who you would imagine was fresh from England with his skylarks and fieldfares, etc. I called the attention of the editor to it, but I suppose it will go in all the same. My portfolios are full of sketches and studies and notes thereon as to dates, etc. In writing haphazard I fall into many errors, but I let no manuscript leave my hands carelessly prepared. I have been criticised on my ‘coltsfoot,’ some thinking only _Tussilago Farfara_, whereas I used the ‘common’ name in our section for the _Asarum Canadense_. So also with my partridge, I knew better; but should I have alluded to a ‘ruffed grouse’ in Sandy Hook, they would have thought I was talking Latin!” There is an interesting letter, much prized by Gibson, in which his old friend gave him such unstinted praise as seldom comes from so exacting a critic in the field in which the young man was at work. Mr. Gunn wrote him: “GUNNERY, WASHINGTON, CONN. “_Sunday, June 6th, 11 P.M._ “MY DEAR WILLIE: