148 SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 
present the appearance of a ‘tramp.’ I have heard him 
say that when on one of his walking tours he visited a little 
town in the interior of the state for the purpose of having 
a talk with the Governor of Pennsylvania who was at a 
hotel there. My father went to the office and asked for 
a room; the clerk although he concluded to take in the 
dusty stranger, laden with very odd baggage, gave him a 
small room in the part of the house reserved for the 
humblest guests. My father with characteristic modesty, 
meekly took the quarters assigned him, went upstairs 
with his luggage, washed and dressed, came down stairs 
where he met the Governor in the office receiving a 
hearty and friendly greeting. The clerk at the earliest 
possible moment told him he had a better room now 
vacant and suggested that he should move. My father 
used to tell this story with great glee. 
“His relations with children were delightful. I 
remember very well in my own childhood how fertile his 
imagination was in making up fairy tales for my amuse- 
ment. One thing only I disapproved. After the hero 
and heroine had gone through marvelous adventures, 
escaped desperate perils from ogres, witches, wild beasts, 
etc., by the exercise of their skill and ingenuity or the 
intervention of good fairies, and were safely and happily 
married, he could never be induced to stop there and, in 
spite of all my attempts at interruption, it was always 
announced that ‘they lived happily ever afterward, 
until one day in going by a soap boiler’s they unfortu- 
nately fell into a vat and were made into soap.’ 
“The first distinct picture of my father in my own 
mind is of his meeting my mother and myself at a railroad 
station apparently on one of the rare occasions when we 
were traveling for a time by different routes. The 
