University of Virginia, where he was Professor of Chemistry and Materia Medica, paid tribute to him as “the inventive and learned, the ingenuous and high-souled John Patten Emmet, one of the earliest supports and one of the brightest ornaments of this University.” If it is curious to find the future distinguished scientist causing anxiety to his father for the slow opening of his intellect, it is still more curious to find his little brother Tom causing him anxiety because some incident related by his grandparents seemed to indicate in the tiny boy a selfish disposition. So concerned was the father at some trait of childish prudence related by the grandparents for his amusement that he had thoughts of taking little Tom to Fort George to educate him under his own eyes. Grandmother Emmet has to assure him that what Mary Anne and she said “imported nothing more than to convey to you an idea of the strength of his intellect, for surely you did not suppose that the disposition of a child, not four years old, would do more than to divert you instead of giving you sincere alarm. The share of understanding which he promises to have will be fully sufficient to overcome his little childish dispositions, and without severity he will do what is right by only pointing it out to him.” How groundless were his father’s fears—and how well justified his grandmother’s confidence, the life of Thomas Addis Emmet, junior, sufficiently proves. His nephew and namesake, recalling the happy days he and the other young people of his generation spent in Mr. Emmet’s lovely home, Mount Vernon, New York, tells us that it would not be possible to find a more genial, kindly and charitable couple than Mr. and Mrs. Emmet. “The term charitable could be applied to him in every sense, as it was difficult for him even to suspect a bad motive, and he frequently suffered for his faith in others. Later in life Mr. Emmet became embarrassed on account of the frequent assistance he had rendered supposed friends and from placing too much reliance on their promises.”