And yet of these three, two are gone
and have left less; and this book, perhaps, when it is old and
foxy, and some one picks it up in a corner of a book-shop, and
glances through it, smiling at the old, graceless turns of speech,
and perhaps for the love of ALMA MATER (which may be still extant
and flourishing) buys it, not without haggling, for some pence -
this book may alone preserve a memory of James Walter Ferrier and
Robert Glasgow Brown.
Their thoughts ran very differently on that December morning; they
were all on fire with ambition; and when they had called me in to
them, and made me a sharer in their design, I too became drunken
with pride and hope. We were to found a University magazine. A
pair of little, active brothers - Livingstone by name, great
skippers on the foot, great rubbers of the hands, who kept a book-
shop over against the University building - had been debauched to
play the part of publishers. We four were to be conjunct editors
and, what was the main point of the concern, to print our own
works; while, by every rule of arithmetic - that flatterer of
credulity - the adventure must succeed and bring great profit.
Well, well: it was a bright vision. I went home that morning
walking upon air. To have been chosen by these three distinguished
students was to me the most unspeakable advance; it was my first
draught of consideration; it reconciled me to myself and to my
fellow-men; and as I steered round the railings at the Tron, I
could not withhold my lips from smiling publicly.
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