Father always took a most lively interest in the few magazine articles I wrote and though he would never "correct" a MS. he would tell why it was good or bad, and if it was good it gave him the greatest pleasure. Once when I wrote an article called "Making Hens Lay" and showed him the cheque I received for it, he exclaimed, "_That_ is the way to make hens lay!" Though he often said that if he wrote what the editors wanted him to write, very soon they would not want what he did write, he replied to my saying that Verdi's most popular opera was written to order, that a similar request from an editor gave him a hint from which he wrote one of his best essays. The controversy which Father started and which President Roosevelt joined and in which he coined the phrase "nature fakers" did Father much good in that it quickened his thoughts and stimulated him in many ways. He received many abusive letters, which only amused and entertained him, and in all it made a most interesting episode. In one of his letters from Washington he wrote: "At the Carnegie dinner I met Thompson Seton. He behaved finely and asked to sit next me at dinner. He quite won my heart." That was March 31, 1903. In checking up the statements made by the "nature fakers" Father's own power of observation was much sharpened and he became more alert. And receiving pay for articles that he wrote on the subject was an added source of fun; it was like spoils captured from the enemy. I remember well one day on the Champlain Canal we stopped at noon and Father said hilariously: "We'll all go to the hotel for dinner. We won't bother to cook dinner, we'll let the nature fakers pay for our dinner!" Like everyone else he had his blind side, things he looked at without seeing, things that had no interest or message for him. On March 1, 1908, he wrote: "That slip in the _Outlook_ letter irritates me. But any one can see it was a slip of the pen--nothing can drift to windward--things drift to leeward. I see how they are laughing at me in the last number."