problem.

Except when he had to expound and recommend some scheme for which he
had become responsible, or when he had been laid hold of by others
to speak in behalf of a "Report" or a proposal in which they were
interested, Dr. Cairns did not intervene often in the debates of the
United Presbyterian Synod. He preferred, to the disappointment of
many of his friends, to listen rather than to speak, and shrank from
putting himself in any way forward. He had been Moderator of the Synod
in 1872, and as an ex-Moderator he had the privilege, accorded by
custom, of sitting on the platform of the Synod Hall on the benches
to the right and left of the chair. But he never seemed comfortable
up there. He would sit with his hands pressed together, and in a
stooping posture, as if he wanted to make his big body as small and
inconspicuous as possible; and, as often as he could, he would go down
and take his place among the rank and file of the members far back in
the hall. But he had all a true United Presbyterian's loyal affection
for the Synod, and a peculiar delight in those reunions of old friends
which its meetings afforded. Amongst his oldest friends was William
Graham, who although, since the English Union, no longer a United
Presbyterian, simply could not keep away from the haunts of his youth
when the month of May came round. On such occasions he was always Dr.
Cairns's guest at Spence Street. He kept things lively there with his
nimble wit, and in particular subjected his host to a perpetual and
merciless fire of "chaff." No one else ventured to assail him as
Graham thus did; for, with all his geniality and unaffected humility,
there was a certain personal dignity about him which few ventured to
invade. But he took all his friend's banter with a smile of quiet
enjoyment, and sometimes a more than usually outrageous sally would
send him into convulsions of laughter, whose resounding peals filled
the house with their echoes.

In the spring of 1879 died the venerable Principal Harper.
Dr. Cairns felt the loss very keenly, for Dr. Harper had been a loyal
and generous friend and colleague, on whose clear and firm judgment
he had been wont to rely in many a difficult emergency. Besides, as
his biographer has truly said, "he was habitually thankful to have
someone near him whom he could fairly ask to take the foremost
place."[18] Now that Dr. Harper was gone, there seemed to be no doubt
that that foremost place would be thrust u