Among the carefully preserved papers of his early years are a bundle of old letters from schoolmates, enclosed in an envelope addressed to his mother, with an endorsation begging her to see to their safe keeping. They furnish pleasant glimpses of the affectionate relations already established with more than one of the friends of later years. The solemn protest of the learned Principal, Dr. Lee, against “that most objectionable and pernicious practice of making balls of snow,” is humorously commented on, along with graver matters, such as pertained to the themes and discussions of the Juvenile Literary Society, and the more ambitious debating societies of the university. His own sense of humour found free play both in early and later years; but above all, his youthful letters are full of pleasant gossip of the old sailors of Kinghorn, who told him yarns of the victories in which they had shared in the great French war, and the pranks they indulged in when flush with prize-money. Old Charlie Mackenzie had been in the _Mars_ in her action with the _Hercules_, one of the bloodiest naval conflicts of the war. Another of the Kinghorn story-tellers--Orrock, who died in 1836, upwards of ninety years of age--claimed to have known the man who acted as drummer at the Porteous mob, and to have learned from him some details of the burning of the doors, and so gaining admission to the Tolbooth. The intense feeling of local attachment which such reminiscences reveal manifested itself in later years in the interest he took in improvements at Kinghorn, as well as in the more costly restorations in his native city. But one of the first fruits of his intercourse with the old pensioners of Kinghorn, who, as he says, “were great fishers for podlies from certain rocks on the sea-shore,” was the capture of a crab with a double claw, a _lusus naturæ_, which furnished a novel subject for discussion at a meeting of the Juvenile Literary Society. His contributions to its collections and learned discussions were generally of the same class--algæ, shells, or other marine curiosities, the fruits of his last holiday ramble by the sea.