eager and active mind, and his reading extended over a wide range of subjects, including, among others, Medicine, Surgery, Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, Natural History, Theology, Biography, History, Travels, General Science,  Belles-Lettres, Mechanics, and Fiction.  He was exceedingly fond of music, and played daily on the violin, in which accomplishment he seems to have bad considerable skill.
Although barely eighteen be was serious and earnest in his manner, and even his amusements were not of a frivolous character.  Deeply attached to a truly religious mother, who had early imbued him with a love for everything that was good and pure, he set himself a standard at the very outset of his career from which he never deviated.
His filial devotion is shown by numerous entries in his diary, and it was evidently a heartfelt pleasure for him to accompany his mother in her walks and drives or in visits to friends. He gives an amusing account, under date of June 25th, 1794,
of his first experience of the new delicacy, ice-cream, which is said to have been made for the first time in New York by a Frenchman  during this very year. He speaks of it as follows: "I proposed to mamma to walk to Corre's (at 21 State Street to take a glass

of ice-cream by way of experiment. She assented, and I saw the pleasure this mark of attention gave her. We each took a glass (1 s. each), and found it a very delicious refreshment for warm weather. While we were there some French officers came capering in upon the same errand. Mamma was much diverted at hearing one of htem exclaim that it was 'good for Hell.' Corre's place was called the 'ice-house.'"
   In 1794, when he was nineteen, he designed and engraved a commencement ticket for Columbia College, and from this time on was regularly employed both with his pencil and graver. That he did not neglect his medical studies, howeve, for the more fascinating work of engraving, is sufficiently shown by the fact that Dr. Young offered to make him a partner immediately after he obtained his license, in 1795, although he had only just passed his twentieth birthday.
   The formalities attending the granting of this license are described by Anderson in his diary for April, 1795:
   "April 8th, I called upon the Mayor and expressed my wish to undergo an examination for the practice of Physic.--He directed me to apply to Judge Benson--I found him out.