Much of H. J. Paton’s correspondence is preserved in Queen’s College Library, Oxford, and among it is a stray letter, not in any collection or series, from Gilbert Ryle, who was his pupil between 1920 and 1924. Later the two were to be colleagues in the university, as professors of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy respectively, but here Ryle is essaying before his first mentor the first steps of his own that he was minded to take in philosophy. We published and annotated Ryle’s letter to Paton.