ded although not a member of his
class; and, himself not without his amiable eccentricities, he could not
fail to have a soft spot in his heart for the quaint humour and the
pleasant eccentricity which endeared Professor Blackie to his class and
to the public. He was a poor attender at the Greek Class, however, and
when he presented himself for his certificate the keen blue eyes of the
Professor looked at him critically, and the Professor's remark was that
he had been so seldom present at lectures it was hardly possible to
recognise his face!

Many of the students of that day have taken a good place in the world;
some of them have long ere now left the things of time behind them; one
or two of them Mr Stevenson has pictured in his graphic pages. Several
of them regarded him as an interesting personality, but very few of them
suspected that he was 'the chiel amang them takin' notes' for future
work that would bring world-wide fame, not only to himself, but to his
University and to the city of his birth.

On the 2nd March 1869 he was proposed by George Melville, Esq.,
Advocate, as a member of the Speculative Society, and we know from
_Memories and Portraits_ how much he appreciated his membership of that
Society, which has in its day included in the roll, on which his name
stood No. 992, most of the men whose names are honoured in Scotland's
capital, and many of whom the fame and the memory are revered in far
places of the earth. That he might smoke in the hall of the Speculative,
in the very stronghold of University authority, he playfully professes
to have been his chief pleasure in the thing; but other men, to whom his
earnest face, his eagerness in debate, made one of the pleasures of its
meetings, tell another story, and it was commonly said in those days
that there would always be something of interest in hand if Stevenson
took a part in it.

When he forsook the profession of engineering, Mr Stevenson attended the
Law classes at the University, with the intention of being called to the
Bar, but it is not on record that he was a more exemplary student of law
than he had been of engineering, and he still found more satisfaction in
his truant rambles and his meditations in old graveyards than he did in
the legitimate study of his profession.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Cairketton is the form used in the Ordnance Survey.

CHAPTER IV

AS I FIRST KNEW HIM

'Blessed are his parents in a son, so graced in face an