Mrs. Faraday's niece, Miss Reid, was peculiarly well fitted to give reminiscences of her uncle, as she was for nearly twenty years (from 1826) one of the family at the Royal Institution. When she first went there Miss Reid was only a little child; and when her aunt was going out she was taken down to Faraday's laboratory, where, as she afterwards wrote, "I had, of course, to sit as still as a mouse, with my needlework; but my uncle would often stop and give me a kind word or a nod, or sometimes throw a bit of potassium into water to amuse me." "In all my childish troubles," Miss Reid continues, "he was my never-failing comforter, and seldom too busy, if I stole into his room, to spare me a few minutes; and when perhaps I was naughty and rebellious, how gently and kindly he would win me round, telling me what he used to feel himself when he was young, advising me to submit to the reproof I was fighting against. "I remember his saying that he found it a good and useful rule to listen to all corrections quietly, even if he did not see reason to agree with them. "If I had a difficult lesson, a word or two from him would clear away all my trouble; and many a long wearisome sum in arithmetic became quite a delight when he undertook to explain it." The same lady gives some admirable notes of a holiday the small family party spent at Walmer, in Kent. How they drove down on the outside of the coach, and how full of fun Faraday was, when they reached Shooter's Hill, over Falstaff and the men in buckram; "not a sight nor a sound of interest escaped his quick eye and ear." "At Walmer we had a cottage in a field, and my uncle was delighted because a window looked directly into a blackbird's nest built in a cherry tree. He would go many times in a day to watch the parent birds feeding their young." Sunrise and sunset were never-failing sources of delighted admiration to him; at such times he was the best of companions, and it has been described as a great treat to watch the glorious sight with him. "He carried Galpin's _Botany_ in his pocket, and used to make me examine any flower new to me as we rested in the fields. The first we got at Walmer was the _Echium vulgare_, and is always associated in my mind with his lesson. For when we met with it a second time he asked, 'What is the name of that flower?' 'Viper's bugloss,' said I. 'No, no, I must have the Latin name,' said he."