answered, 'Very much indeed,' whereupon he looked exceedingly gratified and prouder than ever. I wish there were more such pride." On another occasion he writes, "At present I had sooner hear Dr. Candlish than any one. He is so strong and honest, and wide in his sympathies. His address to the students was full of passion and feeling, and sympathy with the difficulty of believing some of our Calvinistic doctrines, such as eternal ruin, heathens' doom, etc. He went a very great length indeed, and ended by saying it was too hard for him, and his heart drew him the other way, and all he could do was to fall back on his loyalty to Christ. It was more a picture of his own heart's struggles than the Principal's address." But his usual note is, "Heard ————, in ———— Church: middling." In 1871 he gained the Hamilton Scholarship in a most brilliant manner, his marks being so extraordinary that as they came in the secretary of the Senatus thought there must be some mistake. His fellow-students, he writes, were overwhelmingly kind in their congratulations, and he himself seems to have rejoiced in this success more than in any other of his life. One thing was that in his after-work he would not have the same amount of anxiety and despair that weighed him down in his preparations. But the chief thing was the joy it would give at home. "I need not tell you," he writes to his mother, "how _sweet_ your letter was to me, telling me of your joy on receipt of the telegram. When no letter came in the morning you cannot think how disappointed I was, for, to confess the truth, I had been thinking all Sabbath of the pleasure of reading the home letters, and in them getting the real joy of the scholarship. For, except the pleasure of knowing the gladness caused at home, there is not much satisfaction otherwise in it. It is strange how soon, after the first surprise of getting it, the delight of getting it passed away, and I think there was more enjoyment in the working for it than in the having it."