10 



debt, of gratitude we owe to our Secretary, Mr. Law, who has been 

 the Hfe and soul of the Society. He has acquired documents for 

 us, he has superintended their printing, he has weeded the docu- 

 ments he has chosen, and from day to day and from hour to hour, 

 all through the years the Society has existed, Mr. Law has been 

 its moving spirit. Most of us — some of us at anyrate — I am 

 certain of the President — are mere figureheads of the Society, 

 and the moving spring of all the machinery which has had such a 

 beneficent and useful result has been Mr. Law. Unhappily, the 

 health of Mr. Law has not been all that could be wished, and I 

 think he has shown conspicuously his courage in facing the 

 elements to-day and giving us the pleasure of seeing him amongst 

 us, and enabling us to show him some slight testimony of the 

 universal gratitude that we feel to him. This year it occurred to 

 some of us, and we are grateful to those to whom it occurred, 

 that the present offered a suitable occasion for showing Mr. Law 

 some slight testimony of the esteem and gratitude we feel for 

 him, and the result has been that we have purchased a valuable 

 symbol in the shape of this silver bowl, which will enclose 

 a cheque for ,£210, which I here put into it, and which has 

 been raised by subscriptions limited to a guinea from members of 

 the Society. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I know it is your wish 

 that I should hand it to Mr. Law with an expression of our 

 devoted gratitude to him for his great and inestimable services to 

 us, and hope that he may be long spared to enjoy it, and that it 

 will recall to him in his quiet retirement the grateful and affec- 

 tionate sentiments felt for him by the whole of the Scottish 

 History Society. 



The Silver Bowl bore the following inscription : — ' Presented, 

 with a purse of two hundred guineas, to Thomas Graves Law, 

 LL.D., by members of the Scottish History Society, in recognition 

 of his valuable services as Honorary Secretary of the Society from 

 its commencement in February 1886. — 28th November 1903.' 



Mr. Law, in acknowledging the gift, said — My Lords, Ladies, and 

 Gentlemen — How am I adequately to express the feelings, with 

 which I am well-nigh overwhelmed, at the sight of this magnificent 

 testimonial. In the first place, let me say that never was I more 

 surprised than when I first heard of what was being done. I had 

 never dreamt of such a thing. The work has been always to me 



