Page:Auk Volume 37-1920.djvu/92

Auk 24 Gehring, William Brewster: An Appreciation. [j" n WILLIAM BREWSTER — AN APPRECIATION. BY JOHN GEORGE GEHRING. To appear before this body of Nature Lovers in an attempt to pay loving tribute to the memory of such a man as William Brewster, many of you having had your own relations of intimate friendship with him for years and some from boyhood, might seem like an intrusion under ordinary circumstances; but the circumstances are not ordinary when it is William Brewster of whom I speak! We all knew him to be a man of a wonderfully rich and many-sided character, — and we all know that to merely say how we loved him and shall always revere him, does not lift the weight of an irrepar- able calamity that has befallen us. Nevertheless it seems impera- tive as well as a precious privilege that I, at his own request, may be permitted, through your Journal, to give expression to what lies in my own heart. On the eleventh day of last July William Brewster breathed out his last earthly hour in his tree-embowered chamber in his home in Cambridge. During the last weeks of his final illness it was my great privilege to be many hours by his side, to listen to his words, to return the glances of his friendly and trusting eyes, and to min- ister to him with such little attentions as one who loves his dearest friend, whom he is about to lose out of his earthly life, eagerly desires to bestow. Through all those swiftly passing days the voices of his beloved birds came through the open windows of his chamber, and spoke to him through the ever-receptive senses of his bird-loving soul. Almost to the last conscious hour the notes of the robins never failed to elicit a recognition or some sign of pleasure. Indeed, to the sympathetic few who hovered around him, even after he had ceased to be perceptive of the environment of the room and his friends, it seemed that there still remained open the door that led to his love for the birds, for he ever appeared to be conscious of their movements and their notes, and often his countenance would faintly lighten with the recognition of their calls after he had become too feeble to utter words.