We recall the girl with the tea-cakes whom he met on his first journey while tramping across New Jersey.  There was also something of human love and fellowship in his familiarity with wild animals in Egypt.  In a free, joyous letter to his betrothed, Mary Agnew, he tells a curious incident of a similar kind, which occurred while he was editing the paper at Phoenixville.  “On Sunday,” says he, “I took [Schiller’s] ’Don Carlos’ with me in our boat, and rowed myself out of sight of the village into the solitude of the autumn woods.  The sky was blue and bright as that of Eden, and the bright trees waved over me like gorgeous banners from the hilltops.  I sat on a sunny slope and read for hours; it was a rare enjoyment!  As I moved to rise I found a snake, which had crept up to me for warmth, and was coiled up quietly under my arm.  I was somewhat startled, but the reptile slid noiselessly away, and I could not harm it.”

A pretty story is told of Taylor by one who called on him when he was on one of his lecture tours.  He was a stranger in the house of strangers, and no doubt as much a stranger to the cat as to any of the people; but it did not take him long to slip into easy intercourse with men or animals.  “I had listened for some time to his intelligent descriptions, enunciated with extreme modesty in the modulated tones of his pleasing voice, when Tom, a large Maltese cat, entered the room.  At Mr. Taylor’s invitation Tom approached him, and as he stroked the fur of the handsome cat, a sort of magnetism seemed to be imparted to the family pet, for he rolled over at the feet of his new-made friend, and seemed delighted with the beginning of the interview.  In the most natural manner possible, Mr. Taylor slid off, as it were, from the sofa on which he had been sitting, and assumed the position of a Turk on the rug before the sofa, playing with delighted Tom in the most buoyant manner, still continuing his conversation, but changing the subject, for the nonce, to that of cats, and narrating many stories respecting the weird and wise conduct of these animals, which are at once loved and feared by the human race.”

He even felt a sort of personal tenderness for the old trees on his place at Kennett.  He said that friends were telling him to cut this tree and cut that.  To him this would have been almost a sacrilege.  The trees seemed to depend on him for protection, and they should have it.  Writing from this country home which he had built, he says, “The birds know me already, and I have learned to imitate the partridge and rain-dove, so that I can lure them to me.”