The affair has affected me more than I can tell.... You will laugh, but it is true all the same, that I can hardly eat or sleep. For the attack itself I don’t mind, I know that my book is a bit of honest true work, and will outlive the attempts ... to stifle it.... I wish the snow would go and let me out to have a walk. Sometimes I wish that I had kept clear of writing books altogether.... I remember wondering once when Green told me that when he was vexed with anything a romp with his bairns made him quite hearty. It seemed to me overstrained. I don’t think so now that I have bairns of my own. Their quaint and funny ways quite carry you out of yourself.... Dearly as I love life, I can already foresee that the time will come when I shall be glad to lie down and sleep the sleep that knows no waking.... Verily I do believe a good wife and loving mother is the only treasure of treasures that is worth striving for in this world!... How much you and I have to be thankful for! These are a few extracts written to his friend Mr Horne at the moment when the history of the incident was just becoming plain, and at a time also when Mr Horne’s first child had just been born; they throw perhaps more light upon it and upon the character of James Geikie than any ordered narrative could do. Later letters of the same spring emphasise the effect which the incident had upon him. “The whole thing,” he writes in one letter, “has worried me more than I can tell;” but a journey south, where, _inter alia_, he lectured at Hull, and led a big geological excursion, helped to change the current of his thoughts, while his reception at Hull gratified him greatly. Fresh letters from continental geologists also, not only praising his book but discussing the bearing of his results upon their observations in various parts of Europe, must have helped to assure him that it was worth while to do honest work, despite detractors. Further, the family moved from Perth to Birnam, where they took a charming cottage at the foot of Birnam Hill, covered with roses, and with a large untidy garden. The early summer was brilliantly fine, and the fresh air and open life of the country must have made it easier to take a more philosophical view of the affair, unpleasant as it was. The letters of early summer show at least a perceptible recovery of balance and cheerfulness. His third son was born in June, and in answer to congratulations he says:--“A _third_ boy was a great disappointment--a girl would have ‘completed’ all the family any reasonable man could desire!” The arrival of the baby prevented him from accompanying Dr Helland on a projected trip to Iceland in early summer, but, rather curiously, an opportunity to visit the island occurred a little later in the same year, for he went to report on some sulphur mines.