As the young man read on in class, father, who in later years was a little deaf, stopped him saying, "Sir, did I understand you to say Sniff ?" "No, sir, I did not, I said Slyph." In my father's Latin classes there were many absurd mistakes, as when he asked a student, "What was ambrosia ?" and the reply was, "The gods' hair oil," an answer evidently suggested by the constant advertisement of "Sterling's Ambrosia" for the hair.
I will now refer to my two uncles on my father's side.

The older one was Dyer H.Sanborn, a noted educator of his time, and a grammarian, publishing a text-book on that theme and honouring the parts of speech with a rhyme which began-- A noun's the name of anything, As hoop or garden, ball or swing; Three little words we often see The articles, a, an, and the.
Mrs.Eddy, of Christian Science fame, spoke of him with pride as her preceptor.

He liked to constitute himself an examining committee of one and visit the schools near him.

Once he found only five very small children, and remarked approvingly, "Good order here." He, unfortunately, for his brothers, developed an intense interest in genealogy, and after getting them to look up the family tree in several branches, would soon announce to dear brother Edwin, or dear brother John, "the papers you sent have disappeared; please send a duplicate at once." My other uncle, John Sewall Sanborn, graduated at Dartmouth, and after studying law, he started for a career in Canada, landed in Sherbrooke, P.Q., with the traditional fifty cents in his pocket, and began to practise law.

Soon acquiring a fine practice, he married the strikingly handsome daughter of Mr.Brooks, the most important man in that region, and rose to a position on the Queen's Bench.