He was never without the companionship of one or two terriers, to whom he taught many tricks, and with whom he seemed to have complete sympathy. As a boy, Maxwell was not one to profit much by the ordinary teaching of the schools, and experience with a private tutor at home did not lead to very satisfactory results. At the age of ten, therefore, he was sent to the Edinburgh Academy, under the care of Archdeacon Williams, who was then rector. On his first appearance in this fashionable school, he was naturally a source of amusement to his companions; but he held his ground, and soon gained more respect than he had previously provoked ridicule. While at school in Edinburgh, he resided with his father's sister, Mrs. Wedderburn, and devoted a very considerable share of his time and attention to relieving the solitude of the old man at Glenlair, by letters written in quaint styles, sometimes backwards, sometimes in cypher, sometimes in different colours, so arranged that the characters written in a particular colour, when placed consecutively, formed another sentence. All the details of his school and home life, and the special peculiarities of the masters at the academy, were thus faithfully transmitted to his father, by whom the letters were religiously preserved. At thirteen he had evidently made progress in solid geometry, though he had not commenced Euclid, for he writes to his father, "I have made a tetrahedron, a dodecahedron, and two other hedrons whose names I don't know." In these letters to Glenlair he generally signed himself, "Your most obedient servant." Sometimes his fun found vent even upon the envelope; for example:-- "Mr. John Clerk Maxwell, "Postyknowswere, "Kirkpatrick Durham, "Dumfries." Sometimes he would seal his letters with electrotypes of natural objects (beetles, etc.), of his own making. In July, 1845, he writes:-- I have got the eleventh prize for scholarship, the first for English, the prize for English verses, and the mathematical medal.