IN HIS STUDY 33 



the asking. The subjects discussed were chiefly scientific, but occasionally 

 matters of purely personal interest were touched upon. 



Up to the last year of his busy life, Tait's mind was for ever thinking 

 out some new line of attack on the elusive laws of nature or on the 

 properties of quaternion functions, while with ready utterance and facile pen 

 he was teaching hundreds and thousands the grand principles as well as some 

 of the mysteries of his science. As the years increased, he mingled less and 

 less with general society. In his own home he was the most hospitable 

 of hosts, full of story and jest, and alive to all the passing humours of the 

 moment. Possessed of a verbal memory of unusual accuracy he could often 

 suit the occasion with a quotation from one of his favourite authors, Horace, 

 Cervantes, Shakespeare, Scott, Byron, Dumas, Thackeray, Dickens, etc. 

 It mattered not on what he was engaged, he had a ready welcome 

 for his friends in the small study which looked out south across the 

 Meadows. His shaded gas-lamp which stood on the table cast a shadow 

 round the walls, somewhat further dimmed by the wreaths of tobacco smoke 

 which stole slowly from his pipe for though a steady he was not a rapid 

 smoker. There he would sit when alone and work the long night through, 

 rising occasionally to fill his pipe as he once remarked "it is when you are 

 filling your pipe that you think your brilliant thoughts." But let a visitor 

 enter, then, unless there was a batch of examination papers to finish off before 

 a certain early date, he would lay his work aside and clear decks for a social 

 or scientific chat as the case might be. 



In that den walled with book shelves and furnished with a few chairs, the 

 table littered with journals, with proofsheets and manuscript, with books 

 waiting to be reviewed, or with the most recent gifts of original papers from 

 scientific men in every centre of life and civilisation in that den Tail had 

 entertained the greatest mathematicians and physicists of the age ; Kelvin, 

 Maxwell, Stokes, Helmholtz, Newcomb, Cayley, Sylvester, Clifford, Bierens 

 de Haan, Cremona, Hermite, to name only some of those who are no more 

 with us. There only was it possible to find him at leisure to discuss a scientific 

 question. At college matters were different, the lecture was just about to 

 begin, or it had just ended and some other University work called for attention. 



There were three outstanding occasions on which Professor Tait and 



Mrs Tait made their home a lively centre of science and fun, namely, 



the British Association Meetings of 1871 and 1892 and the University 



Tercentenary Celebration of 1884. At the later meeting of the British 



T. 5 



