486 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. [Sess. 
began to notice in him symptoms of impaired health, and some loss of the 
indefatigable vigour that had hitherto characterised him. Indeed, he began, 
to their dismay, to speak sometimes of withdrawing from his many 
activities. The first actual step in this direction was taken in October 
1909, when, at the end of the first four years’ term of office as chairman of 
the Edinburgh Provincial Committee, he intimated his inability to accede to 
a request which had been urgently addressed to him that he should consent 
to accept nomination as a member of the new Committee. “ I have been 
medically advised,” he wrote, “ that for some time to come I must diminish 
the amount of business for which I am responsible, if I am not to court 
final unfitness for all business whatsoever. As the work of your Committee 
was the last faggot added to the bundle, it must be the first removed.” 
After touching upon the arduous work of the Committee during the pre- 
ceding four years, he went on to allude to his personal relations with his 
colleagues. u These relations, I am happy to say, are not clouded by a 
single unpleasant recollection. The name of the local administrator is 
‘ writ in water.’ He must look for his reward in the approbation of his 
own conscience, and in the keen sense of friendly comradeship which is 
generated by sharing a common enterprise for what is believed to be the 
public good. Such reward is enough, in my opinion, for any man ; certainly 
enough for me. During the four years that I have worked with you I 
have learned to know and like many men with whom I should otherwise 
never have become intimate. I hope the friends I have thus made will 
remember me as long as I shall remember them, and with equal pleasure. 
... I thank you for the uniform kindness and courtesy with which you 
have treated me during my term of office. The best I can wish for my 
successor is that his Committee may show him the same consideration as 
you have always given to me.” 
The Committee, in recording their grateful sense of his eminent services, 
spoke of his public work in connection with education in Scotland, in what 
had really been a fresh chapter of its record, as having merited and as 
having received “ the warmest appreciation of all who are conversant with 
the subject ” ; and added : “ He has been an ideal chairman, and his resigna- 
tion has been received by all with a profound sense of personal loss. He 
has justly earned their sincere and affectionate regard. They have admired 
his great business capacity and the singular thoroughness and devotion with 
which he carried out the duties of his responsible office. They appreciate 
no less his courtesy, his fairness of mind, his personal kindness, and his 
unselfish readiness to credit to others the success of work which he had 
himself inspired.” 
