The latter lived with the Geikie family in Edinburgh for some time in his student days. The MS. from which the above quotation is made, which is annotated in pencil by its author, is, as stated, a mere fragment and undated. Internal evidence, however, suggests that it may have been written about 1856, the writing and composition recalling some extant letters of this period, and it shows, as further quotations will indicate, that its author, with all his obvious immaturity, was even then feeling after a style. James Geikie’s mother was a Miss Thom, a daughter of a merchant captain, who was born in Inverness but established himself at Dunbar. Here he married the daughter of a local shipbuilder, whose family was connected by marriage--to quote again the MS. already mentioned--with “that Roderick MacKenzie who suffered his head to be taken from him that he might save that of Prince Charles Stewart”; a fact of which the boy James confesses himself very proud. In his later days Captain Thom often visited his married daughter, and the important part which he played in developing the imagination of the children is suggested in the following sentences (from MS.):--“My Grandfather Thom when I first knew him had not ceased to plough the sea for his living. He was of a middle stature, well-made, and muscular. I can still see his fine head nearly bald--what hair he had was of a beautiful silver white--his Roman nose. I can still at this late period follow him in his walks. I see him sitting with his old cronies--relics of fights by land and sea--on that seat between the two old trees--long since pulled down to make way for those improvements, so-called, which have altered entirely what in my young days went by the name of ‘The Meadows.’ His stories of adventures with the robbers of the sea are rife in my memory. His voyages to places whose very names smack of fairy-land--his hairbreadth escapes--his deeds of daring--the recollection of all these rises vividly before me at the mere mention of his name. I looked upon him as another Sinbad--a second Robinson Crusoe; and my acquaintance with his queer old friends served to heighten the romantic colours in which I viewed him! Alas! all these school-boy dreamings are past; but they will sometimes flit before me as I lie gazing up into the deep blue of a summer sky, recalling the old days which have gone away into dim forgetfulness: and they will sometimes come again as I sit alone musing by the winter fireside. Verily there is a something--call it what you will--about the past which renders it infinitely more endearing to us than all the brightest dreams of the future.”