PROF. GEIKIE AT THE AGE OF SIXTY. (From a Photograph by Messrs Elliott & Fry) _to face p. 116_ PART I LIFE AND LETTERS CHAPTER I BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 1839-1861 James Geikie was born on 23rd August 1839, in a house in Edinburgh which was later pulled down to make room for the University Union. He was the third son and the third child in a family of eight, consisting of five sons and three daughters, and was baptised as James Murdoch Geikie. He abolished--to use his own word--the Murdoch in boyhood. His father was in business in Edinburgh, but by taste and inclination was a musician, and in later years, after retiring from business, devoted himself entirely to music, and was the author of a number of compositions, sacred and secular. A little anecdote, recalled by his son in later years, suggests that it had always been his ambition to be a professional musician, and that he had been thwarted in youth. The story relates that one day he said to James somewhat sadly:--“If ever you have a son who wants to make music his profession, do not oppose his wish.” In the fulness of time, it is interesting to note, one of James Geikie’s sons did express this desire, and his father scrupulously observed the injunction of the long-dead grandfather. The point is not without importance, from more than one aspect, and is at least a partial refutation of the pessimists who, like Samuel Butler, maintain that each generation repeats the mistakes of the last in dealing with youth. Another artistic strain in the family was represented in the person of Walter Geikie, an uncle, who was a well-known painter of Scotch scenes and left also some good etchings. Of him James Geikie, in an undated fragment of what was apparently intended to be a history of the family, says:--“Of my Uncle Walter I will say nothing: the Life prefixed to his etchings having already forestalled anything I could tell. He was a capital mimic and possessed of boundless good nature. Had he been longer spared he might well have become famous in his profession, but Death, to whom the genius and the numbskull are one and the same, carried him off in the year 1837--two years before I was born.” James, it may be noted here, had himself considerable skill as a draughtsman, as both his published works and his geological note-books show clearly, which adds interest to this note upon his artist uncle. Another uncle, who was a minister and went out to the United States when James was young, was the father of Cunningham Geikie the divine, author of a widely-read _Life of Christ_.