d,
and Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Secretary for Scotland, and Lady
Balfour. After that "Principals' Week" each year became an established
custom. They as well as we became friends, and thereby, they all
agree, great good results to the universities. A spirit of cooeperation
is stimulated. Taking my hand upon leaving after the first yearly
visit, Principal Lang said:

"It has taken the principals of the Scotch universities five hundred
years to learn how to begin our sessions. Spending a week together is
the solution."

One of the memorable results of the gathering at Skibo in 1906 was
that Miss Agnes Irwin, Dean of Radcliffe College, and
great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin, spent the principals' week
with us and all were charmed with her. Franklin received his first
doctor's degree from St. Andrews University, nearly one hundred and
fifty years ago. The second centenary of his birth was finely
celebrated in Philadelphia, and St. Andrews, with numerous other
universities throughout the world, sent addresses. St. Andrews also
sent a degree to the great-granddaughter. As Lord Rector, I was
deputed to confer it and place the mantle upon her. This was done the
first evening before a large audience, when more than two hundred
addresses were presented.

The audience was deeply impressed, as well it might be. St. Andrews
University, the first to confer the degree upon the great-grandfather,
conferred the same degree upon the great-grandchild one hundred and
forty-seven years later (and this upon her own merits as Dean of
Radcliffe College); sent it across the Atlantic to be bestowed by the
hands of its Lord Rector, the first who was not a British subject, but
who was born one as Franklin was, and who became an American citizen
as Franklin did; the ceremony performed in Philadelphia where Franklin
rests, in the presence of a brilliant assembly met to honor his
memory. It was all very beautiful, and I esteemed myself favored,
indeed, to be the medium of such a graceful and appropriate ceremony.
Principal Donaldson of St. Andrews was surely inspired when he thought
of it!

My unanimous reelection by the students of St. Andrews, without a
contest for a second term, was deeply appreciated. And I liked the
Rector's nights, when the students claim him for themselves, no member
of the faculty being invited. We always had a good time. After the
first one, Principal Donaldson gave me the verdict of the Secretary as
rendered to