It was in those very woodlands that his more accurate interest in natural history began. We others--normal and not particularly intelligent little children--joyed in the delights of the country, in our games and our liberty, but he was not only a leader for us in everything, but he also led a life apart from us, seriously studying the birds, their habits and their notes, so that years afterward the result of those long hours of childish concentration took form in his expert knowledge of bird life and lore--so expert a knowledge that even Mr. John Burroughs, the great nature specialist, conceded him equality of information with himself along those lines. It was at Lowantaka, at the breakfast-table one day, after my father had taken the train to New York--this was the second year of our domicile there, and the sad war was over--that my mother received a peculiar-looking letter. I remember her face of puzzled interest as she opened it and the flush that came to her cheek as she turned to my aunt and said: “Oh, Anna, this must be from Irvine!” and read aloud what would now seem like a “personal” on a page of the New York _Herald_. It was as follows: “If Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and Miss Anna Bulloch will walk in Central Park up the Mall, at 3 o’clock on Thursday afternoon of this week [it was then Tuesday] and notice a young man standing under the third tree on the left with a red handkerchief tied around his throat, it will be of interest to them.” As my mother finished reading the letter she burst into tears, for it was long since the younger brother had been heard from, as the amnesty granted to all those taking part in the Rebellion had not been extended to those who had gone to England, as had my two uncles, to assist in the building and the sailing of the _Alabama_, and letters from them were considered too dangerous to be received. This “Irvine” had been saved when the _Alabama_ sank, after her brief career, and the two brothers had settled in Liverpool, and my mother knowing the great sorrow that his mother’s death had meant to this younger brother, had always longed during the intervening months to see him and tell him of that mother’s undying devotion, though she herself had passed away the year before. It seemed now to the active imaginations of the Southern sisters that somehow or other Irvine had braved the authorities, and would be able to see them and hear from their lips the story of the past five years.