26 SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY 



learning languages did not extend to the dead languages 

 as taught in school or college, and he seems to have 

 passed through these classes with but little distinction. 

 To him the pleasantest memories of his college life were 

 of the friendships made there. 



It is not possible to write of all those friends : " Some 

 with lives that came to nothing, Some with deeds 

 as well undone," mostly all scattered now and many 

 dead ; but there are a few names that stand out. 

 Henry Fyfe, a well-known Glasgow lawyer, already 

 quoted, was both a school and a college friend. So 

 was also "Alec MacEwen," later more widely known 

 as the Rev. Professor MacEwen, scholar, theologian 

 and ardent worker for the gathering into one of 

 the many divisions of the Church in Scotland. His 

 work was cut short by death a few months after his 

 friend Ramsay. There was also George Wardlaw Bur- 

 net, an Edinburgh advocate and one of the brilliant 

 wits of the " Parliament House " of his day. His 

 parodies and other verses are too personal and of interest 

 too purely local to be quoted here. Ramsay received 

 the news of his death at Port Said on his way home from 

 India, just after posting him a long letter telling him all 

 about the tour. 



There was another of the friends whom they all looked 

 on as the greatest of them all. John Struthers was a 

 man hardly known out of Scotland and there only to a 

 restricted public. He was a minister of the " Reformed 

 Presbyterian Church," of which Butler said all Scots 



