look in a mirror now it is his face I see. I speak with his voice.
I once had a voice of my own, but nowadays I hear it from far away
only, a melancholy, lonely, lost little pipe. I wanted to be an
explorer, but he willed otherwise. You will all have your
M'Connachies luring you off the high road. Unless you are
constantly on the watch, you will find that he has slowly pushed
you out of yourself and taken your place. He has rather done
for me. I think in his youth he must somehow have guessed the
future and been fleggit by it, flichtered from the nest like a
bird, and so our eggs were left, cold. He has clung to me, less
from mischief than for companionship; I half like him and his penny
whistle; with all his faults he is as Scotch as peat; he whispered
to me just now that you elected him, not me, as your Rector.

A final passing thought. Were an old student given an hour in
which to revisit the St. Andrews of his day, would he spend more
than half of it at lectures? He is more likely to be heard
clattering up bare stairs in search of old companions. But if you
could choose your hour from all the five hundred years of this seat
of learning, wandering at your will from one age to another, how
would you spend it? A fascinating theme; so many notable shades
at once astir that St. Leonard's and St. Mary's grow murky with them.
Hamilton, Melville, Sharpe, Chalmers, down to Herkless, that
distinguished Principal, ripe scholar and warm friend,
the loss of whom I deeply deplore with you. I think if that hour
were mine, and though at St. Andrews he was but a passer-by,
I would give a handsome part of it to a walk with Doctor Johnson.
I should like to have the time of day passed to me in twelve
languages by the Admirable Crichton. A wave of the hand to
Andrew Lang; and then for the archery butts with the gay Montrose,