My uncle Jimmy Bulloch was forgiving and just in reference to the Union forces, and could discuss all phases of the Civil War with entire fairness and generosity.  But in English politics he promptly became a Tory of the most ultra-conservative school.  Lincoln and Grant he could admire, but he would not listen to anything in favor of Mr. Gladstone.  The only occasions on which I ever shook his faith in me were when I would venture meekly to suggest that some of the manifestly preposterous falsehoods about Mr. Gladstone could not be true.  My uncle was one of the best men I have ever known, and when I have sometimes been tempted to wonder how good people can believe of me the unjust and impossible things they do believe, I have consoled myself by thinking of Uncle Jimmy Bulloch’s perfectly sincere conviction that Gladstone was a man of quite exceptional and nameless infamy in both public and private life.

I was a sickly, delicate boy, suffered much from asthma, and frequently had to be taken away on trips to find a place where I could breathe.  One of my memories is of my father walking up and down the room with me in his arms at night when I was a very small person, and of sitting up in bed gasping, with my father and mother trying to help me.  I went very little to school.  I never went to the public schools, as my own children later did, both at the “Cove School” at Oyster Bay and at the “Ford School” in Washington.  For a few months I attended Professor McMullen’s school in Twentieth Street near the house where I was born, but most of the time I had tutors.  As I have already said, my aunt taught me when I was small.  At one time we had a French governess, a loved and valued “mam’selle,” in the household.

When I was ten years old I made my first journey to Europe.  My birthday was spent in Cologne, and in order to give me a thoroughly “party” feeling I remember that my mother put on full dress for my birthday dinner.  I do not think I gained anything from this particular trip abroad.  I cordially hated it, as did my younger brother and sister.  Practically all the enjoyment we had was in exploring any ruins or mountains when we could get away from our elders, and in playing in the different hotels.  Our one desire was to get back to America, and we regarded Europe with the most ignorant chauvinism and contempt.  Four years later, however, I made another journey to Europe, and was old enough to enjoy it thoroughly and profit by it.

While still a small boy I began to take an interest in natural history.  I remember distinctly the first day that I started on my career as zoologist.  I was walking up Broadway, and as I passed the market to which I used sometimes to be sent before breakfast to get strawberries I suddenly saw a dead seal laid out on a slab of wood.  That seal filled me with every possible feeling of romance and adventure.  I asked where it was killed, and was informed in the harbor.  I had already begun to read some of Mayne