He was a reformed sportsman, who, after spending a great part of his life in happily killing things all over the earth, had come to the quaint conclusion that most of them were more interesting alive than dead, especially to themselves.

He found a kindred spirit in the Babe, whose education, along the lines of maiming cats and sparrows with sling shot or air gun, had been absolutely neglected.
Uncle Andy was wont to say that there was only one man in all the world who knew _all_ about all the animals--and that he was not Andrew Barton, Esq.

At this, Bill would smile proudly.

At first this modesty on Uncle Andy's part was a disappointment to the Babe.

But it ended in giving him confidence in whatever Uncle Andy told him; especially after he came to realize that when Uncle Andy spoke of the only man in the world who knew _all_ about animals, he did _not_ mean Bill.
But though the whole field of animal lore was one of absorbing interest to the Babe, from the day when he was so fortunate as to witness a mother fish-hawk teaching her rather unwilling and unventuresome young ones to fly, it was his fellow babes of the wild that he was most anxious to hear about.