The capacity for receiving knowledge, and the capability of applying the knowledge possessed, are characteristics of very different qualities of mind. The latter of these qualities is, _per se_, incomparably the most important and valuable. For one man, with comparatively moderate attainments, but having a facility in applying the knowledge he has acquired, will be a far more useful member of society, and is capable of becoming a more distinguished character, than another of vastly superior acquirements in learning, who does not possess the faculty of application. Thus one, like the skilful mechanician, may be able out of small variety of materials to construct apparatus of indefinite extent of usefulness, or, like the expert and talented smith, may be able to construct out of one material every species of instrument (to use a sailor’s phraseology), “from a needle to an anchor,” whilst another, though possessing almost unlimited stores of materials, may have little capacity for bringing them out and applying them to purposes of usefulness. The former case is that of one who is of himself a practical artist in knowledge; the latter, of one who requires others to bring out and apply the knowledge which he has been careful to store up. My Father, in a truly eminent degree, possessed the first of these characteristics of mind. Whatever knowledge he might gain he was apt in applying, and so applying, by the powers of a vigorous intelligence, as to make the result strikingly original. The incident which I here record, was, indeed, of itself, rather curious and amusing, than important or specially useful. But in it we find developed an order of mind which, if it possess but one fact of a particular species, will, if occasion should ever require, or admit of its being done, turn that one fact to account. Whilst resident for considerable intervals of time in Scotland, during his engagement with the Greenock Whale-fishing Company, my Father had been thrown into intercourse with some of the Gaelic speaking population of the district. Some of their phrases had struck him as being curious and forcible, especially in relation to the economics of worldly policy. Among these, one phrase in particular had been fixed in his memory—“Cum au greim a gheibhthu;” which, being interpreted in Scottish idiom, he understood to imply, “Haud,” or “Keep the grip you have got.”