‘A large long tub stood in the kitchen-court, the ice on the top of which had often to be broken before our horrid plunge into it; we were brought down from the very top of the house, four pair of stairs, with only a cotton cloak over our night gowns, just to chill us completely before the dreadful shock. How I screamed, begged, prayed, entreated to be saved, half the tender-hearted maids in tears beside me, all no use, Millar had her orders. Nearly senseless, I have been taken to the house-keeper’s room, which was always warm, to be dried, then we dressed, without any flannel, and in cotton frocks with short sleeves and low necks. Revived by the fire, we were enabled to endure the next bit of martyrdom, an hour upon the low sofa, so many yards from the nursery hearth, our books in our hands, while our cold breakfast was preparing.’ What a changed life have the little folks of to-day! But, ah me! this name of Gregory to childhood. ‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones ...’ the son’s mixture made the name of Gregory abhorred in every nursery, and all the father’s good deeds are forgotten. On the 29th of September 1763 Dr Gregory’s wife died. It was the greatest sorrow of his life, and afterwards when high honours came to him in his profession, and when the world praised him, he never ceased to think with longing of the early joyous days of his love. Elizabeth Gregory was very happy, and even in her memory there is something tender and simple, something to make one smile, and feel the better of it. Picture this peer’s daughter, as she stood one afternoon, making impotent appeals to her little boy (who was dressed in white for a party,) to leave the herd of small ragamuffins whom he was leading to a glorious mud-damming of the gutter. Little James paid no attention to his mother—I doubt whether he heard her—for the dam was breaking, hope was almost gone, when with a shout of joy he remembered that he himself was a solid body, and sitting down in the breach, cried out in broad Scots to his admiring followers, ‘Mair dubs, laddies, mair dubs.’ Some years after his wife’s death Dr Gregory was invited to go to Edinburgh. Professor Rutherford, who held the chair of the Practice of Physic, wished to retire, but he would not resign his place to Cullen, whom he held a heretic in medicine. So the old professor arranged that John Gregory should be asked to come from Aberdeen, and set up practice in Edinburgh. At another time Professor Gregory would have hesitated, but in his distress and despondency he thought of what a benefit it would be to himself to leave the sad associations of Aberdeen and allay his sorrows in the fulness of work which he knew would await him. His university did not ask him to resign his chair at King’s College, but in 1765 Sir Alexander Gordon of Lesmore was appointed as joint-professor.