a glance of his eye
revealing any amount of fun and frolic. A great writer has said: "Nature
has written a letter of credit on some men's faces, which is honoured
almost wherever presented." James Gilmour's was a face on which Nature
had written no ordinary letter of credit; for there was a sense in which
one might very truly have said that his "face was his fortune." Honesty,
good nature, and true manliness were so stamped upon every feature and
line of it, that you had only to see him to feel that he was one of
God's noblest works, and to be drawn to the man as by a magnetic
influence.

'Gilmour was a puzzle to most of our fellow-students, and they could not
quite make him out. By some he was: regarded as very eccentric, which is
another way of saying that he preserved a very marked individuality, and
always had the courage of his convictions. They did not seem to
understand how so much playfulness and piety, fervour and frolicsomeness
could dwell in the same person. Long before we parted, however, in
January, 1870, I feel certain that all had come to have not only a
profound respect, but also a real heart-love for "dear old Gillie"!

'The night before Gilmour left Highgate for the Christmas vacation we
were all in his study, when someone, remarking on the risk he was
running in going home to Scotland by sea, instead of by train, said in a
jocular way: "Suppose the steamer is wrecked and you get drowned, to
whom do you leave your books, Gilmour?" "Yes," he said at once, "that is
well thought of. Come along, you fellows, and pick out the books you
would like to keep in memory of me, if I never return." Of course we
only laughed and said it was all a joke; but he said, "It is no joke
with me, I mean what I say;" and so he did. He was in dead earnest, and
nothing would satisfy him but that each should pick out the book or
books he would like to have if he never returned. He then turned to me
and said: "Now, I leave the rest to your care, and if I never return I
want all on this shelf sent to my father and mother, and you can do
anything you like with the rest." Had anyone else acted in that way, we
should have certainly suspected that he had gone "_queer_"; but it was
Gilmour, and we all understood the straight, matter-of-fact way in which
he went about everything he did.

'Through a misunderstanding, as we afterwards discovered, the students
at Highgate came into collision with the Directors of the Society over
the