Past shimmering lochs and streams,
Until we view, with all its Bens,
The island of our dreams.
And there we live the life that’s good,
No care, no stress, no strain,
With heart revived and brain renewed,
Lost youth comes back again.
But if, as these verses show, holiday times still as of yore brought a sudden rebound of spirits, the strain of life was obviously beginning to tell. A pathetic letter has been preserved which was written to an old student, now Dr M‘Alpine of the Department of Agriculture, Victoria, in the spring of 1914. In it the writer says:—“Edinburgh has changed much within the last thirty years. To me it is a very different place, for I have seen so many of my old friends and companions pass away. The ghosts of those I have lost crowd about me, and like every old chap I feel the pathos of life. But I cultivate the philosophy of Daft Jamie Gordon, and believe it ‘as weel to dee goin’ as sittin’.’ So I work away and still find much to interest me in this workaday world.”
In an accompanying letter Dr M‘Alpine recalls an incident of his student days which made a great impression upon him. One day, while with a party who were being taken over Arthur’s Seat by Prof. Geikie, the discussion turned from the igneous rocks of the hill to the evidences of former glaciation. Prof. Geikie carefully removed the turf from some rocks near the summit to show the finger-marks of the vanished ice, and then as carefully replaced the grass in order that the evidence of the past might be preserved. For one of his students at least the unconscious act read an unforgettable lesson of reverence.
This message from across the sea may serve to suggest how much gain came from those years which sometimes seemed to be spent largely in a weary round of drudgery. It is not only in his books that the dead man still speaks to the world. That, in fair weather and in foul, in the prime of manhood and when age was creeping on, Prof. Geikie led successive bands of often raw youths and maidens over those hill-sides, has helped to give them an interest which Nature alone could not give, a charm which untrodden ways can never attain. On those grassy slopes an old man saw visions and young men dreamed dreams, and the dreams and the visions have become a part of our island heritage.