Professor Ferrier was never failing in hospitality to his students as to his other friends. Dr. Pryde goes on: 'Every year Ferrier invited the best of his students to dinner. At the dinner at which I was present there were two of his fellow-professors, Sellar and Fischer. It was a great treat for a youth like me. Mrs. Ferrier was effervescent with animal spirits and talk; Ferrier himself, looking like a nobleman in his old-fashioned dress-coat with gold buttons, interposed occasionally with his subtle touches of wit and humour.' The Professor appears to have been an inveterate snuffer. His students used to tell how the silver snuff-box was made the medium of explaining the Berkeleian system, and how to their minds the system, fairly clear in words, became a hopeless tangle when the assistance of the snuff-box was resorted to. And Dr. Pryde narrates how he used to see Professor Spalding and Professor Ferrier seated side by side in the students' benches, looking on the same book, listening to their young colleague Professor Sellar's inspiring lectures, and at intervals exchanging snuff-boxes. He gives the following account of his last visit to Ferrier, when he was on his deathbed, but still in his library among his books: 'He told me that his disease was mortal; but face to face with death he was cheerful and contented, and had bated not one jot of his interest in learning and in public events. He was very anxious that I should take lunch with Mrs. Ferrier and the rest of the family; and though he could not join us, he sent into the dining-room a special bottle of wine as a substitute for himself. Two months afterwards he had passed away.' Tulloch writes after the sad event had occurred:[13] 'I have, of course, heard the sad news from St. Andrews. What sadness it has been to me I cannot tell you. St. Andrews never can be the same place without Ferrier. God knows what is to become of the University with all these breaks upon its old society; and where can we supply such a place as Ferrier's?' And his biographer adds: 'The removal of that delicate and clear spirit from a little society in which his position was so important, and his innate refinement of mind so powerful and beneficial an influence, was a loss almost indescribable, not only to the friends who loved him, but to the University. His great reputation was an honour to the place, combining as it did so many associations of the brilliant past with that due to the finest intellectual perception and the most engaging and attractive character. Even his little whimsicalities and strain of quaint humour gave a charm the more; and the closing of the cheerful house, the centre of wit and brightness to the academical community, was a loss which St. Andrews never failed to feel, nor the survivors to lament.' [13] _Memoir_, p. 196, by Mrs. Oliphant.