Never had learners a happier period of pupilage, and the cordial relations between teacher and students testified to the mutual desire to meet, each, the requirements of the other party to the compact. To the impetus given our minds by association with the genial scholar who directed our studies, was added the stimulus of the table-talk that went on in our hearing daily. It was the informal, suggestive chat of men eager for knowledge, comparing notes and opinions, and discussing questions of deep import—historical, biological, and theological. In the main, they were a bright set of fellows; in the main, likewise, gentlemen at heart and in bearing. It goes without saying that the exception in my mind to the latter clause was our late and hated tutor. I might write to Dorinda, in constrained goody-goodyishness, of the impropriety of “drawing comparisons” between him and Mr. Howison, whose “easy” laugh and winning personality wrought powerfully upon my childish fancy. At heart I loved the one and consistently detested the other. To this hour I recall the gratified thrill of conscious security and triumph that coursed through my minute being when, Mr. Tayloe having taken it upon himself to reprove me for something I said—pert, perhaps, but not otherwise offensive—Mr. Howison remarked, with no show of temper, but firmly: “Mr. Tayloe, you will please recollect that this young lady is now under _my_ care!” He laughed the next moment, as if to pass the matter off pleasantly, but all three of us comprehended what was implied. We began French with our new tutor, and geometry! I crossed the _Pons Asinorum_ in January, and went on with Euclid passably well, if not creditably. Mathematics was never my strong point. The patience and perfect temper of the preceptor never failed him, no matter how far I came short of what he would have had me accomplish in that direction. “Educate them as if they were boys and preparing for college,” my father had said, and he was obeyed. Beyond and above the benefit derived from the study of text-books was the education of daily contact with a mind so richly stored with classic and modern literature, so keenly alive to all that was worthy in the natural, mental, and spiritual world as that of Robert Howison. He had been graduated at the University of Virginia, and for a year or more had practised law in Richmond, resigning the profession to begin studies that would prepare him for what he rated as a higher calling. My debt to him is great, and inadequately acknowledged in these halting lines.