58 ESSAYS BIOGRAPHICAL AND CHEMICAL 



develop early, and whom it is unfair to measure by the 

 uniform standard of a public school. 



Graham's teacher of chemistry was Dr. Thomas 

 Thomson, a man of European reputation. It was in his 

 textbook of chemistry that Dalton's atomic theory was 

 published, before its author had committed his own ideas 

 to the press ; and he was a man who maintained the 

 liveliest interest in his science, and whose teaching was 

 most stimulating. His teacher of physics, Professor 

 Meikleham, was also, I have heard, an attractive lecturer ; 

 and during his student career, Graham devoted much 

 attention to physics and to mathematics. At the end 

 of his student career, however, Graham had an unfortu- 

 nate difference of opinion with his father, who had 

 designed him for the Church ; with that reserve which is 

 frequently a characteristic of the Scottish nature, neither 

 had made the other aware of his wishes in the choice of 

 a profession ; and having made the discovery, with that 

 'dourness,' also characteristic of the race, neither would 

 yield up his will to the other. Graham therefore left his 

 native city, and pursued his studies in Edinburgh, kept 

 from want . by the self-sacrifice of his mother and his 

 sister Margaret, for his father had cut off supplies. 

 There he studied with Dr. Hope, the discoverer of stron- 

 tium, working diligently the while at mathematics and 

 physics, and so preparing himself for his life-work. Before 

 his student days were over, however, he had begun to 

 earn a little money ; and it is recorded that the first six 

 guineas which he earned were spent in presents for his 

 mother and sister. 



Having returned to Glasgow, and started a small private 

 laboratory, it was not long before he was asked to become 

 lecturer in the Mechanics' Institute, taking the place of 

 Dr. Clark, the inventor of the process for softening water, 

 who had been appointed to the Chair of Chemistry at 



