Later in life, in thinking of this same uncle, whose subsequent career never squared with his natural ability, I have come to feel that sometimes people whom we call failures should not be so called,--for it is often their good fortune to leave upon the malleable minds of the next generation an inspiration of which they themselves fall sadly short. In the character of this same charming uncle there must have been some lack of fibre, for, brilliant as he was, he let his talents lie dormant. Yet, perhaps, of all those who influenced our early childhood, the effect upon us produced by his cultivation, his marvellous memory, his literary interests, and his genial good humor had more to do with the early stirring of intellectual desires in his little relatives than almost any other influence at that time. The very fact that he was not achieving a thousand worth-while things, as was my father, the very fact that he was not busied with the practical care and thought for us, as were my mother and aunt--brought about between us that delightful relationship when the older person leads rather than drives the younger into the paths of literature and learning. To have “Uncle Hill” read Shakespeare to us under the trees, and then suggest that we “dress up” and act the parts, to have “Uncle Hill” teach us parts of the famous plays of all the ages and the equally famous poems, was a delight rather than a task; and he interspersed his Shakespeare with the most remarkable, and, to our childish minds, brilliant doggerel, sometimes of his own making, that could possibly be imagined--so that Hamlet’s soliloquy one day seemed quite as palatable as “Villikins and His Dinah,” or “Horum, Chorum, Sumpti Vorum,” the next. To show the relationship between the charming physician of Philadelphia (the home of my uncle and aunt was in that city) and the young philosopher of New York, I am tempted to insert a letter from the latter to the former written in 1873 from Paris on our second trip abroad.