22 SPENCER FULLERTON BAIRD 
however, one or two stories of his falling into a rage 
over some especially trying circumstance, when nearly 
grown, so that it is possible that his serene bearing was 
owing to self-discipline as well as to natural amiability. 
“TI never heard that his father had any especial 
favorite among his children; but certainly he was very 
fond of Spencer and made a great pet of him as far as 
his somewhat strict ideas of discipline would permit. 
He was a very kind father and I do not believe that he 
ever punished the child except as a matter of what he 
believed to be absolute necessity, but he was not one 
who would ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’ when he 
thought that a good sound whipping would be beneficial. 
My father’s principal recollection of his own father was 
of pleasant walks in the country, to which he attributed 
the germ of that love for Nature which afterwards blos- 
somed into his passion for natural history. It is possible 
that my grandfather recognized in the child tastes and 
tendencies akin to his own (whether he knew that they 
were stronger than his own or not, one cannot say) which 
he resolved to foster. One of the legends of my father’s 
very early childhood is of his trotting after his father, 
when my grandfather was weeding or working in his 
garden, with a little basket on his arm ready to receive 
any little plant or flower which his father might give 
him, or to make himself useful by carrying away in it a 
tiny load of weeds to be thrown away, or a few bulbs or 
roots to be carried to another part of the garden for 
transplanting. In the two letters in my father’s collec- 
tion, labelled in his handwriting, ‘My father,’ there are 
admonitions not to forget to water the garden, showing 
this to have been one of the tasks set for the child to 
fulfil. 
