“I have been pretty steady at work since I came. The class is small and not bright, but I am going to give them plenty to do from the first, and I find it a good plan. I have a large attendance of my old pupils, who go on with the higher subjects. This is not part of the College course, so they come merely from choice, and I have begun with the least amusing part of what I intend to give them. Many had been reading in summer, for they did very good papers for me on the old subjects at the beginning of the month. Most of my spare time I have been doing Saturn’s rings, which is getting on now, but lately I have had a great many long letters to write—some to Glenlair, some to private friends, and some all about science.... I have had letters from Thomson and Challis about Saturn—from Hayward, of Durham University, about the brass top, of which he wants one. He says that the earth has been really found to change its axis regularly in the way I supposed. Faraday has also been writing about his own subjects. I have had also to write Forbes a long report on colours; so that for every note I have got I have had to write a couple of sheets in reply, and reporting progress takes a deal of writing and spelling.”
He devised a model (now at the Cavendish Laboratory) to exhibit the motions of the satellites in a disturbed ring, “for the edification of sensible image-worshippers.”
The essay was awarded the prize, and secured for its author great credit among scientific men.
In another letter, written during the same session, he says: “I find my principal work here is teaching my men to avoid vague expressions, as ‘a certain force,’ meaning uncertain; may instead of must; will be instead of is; proportional instead of equal.”
The death, during the autumn, of his College friend Pomeroy, from fever in India, was a great blow to him; his letters at the time show the depth of his feelings and his beliefs.
The question of the fusion of the two Colleges at Aberdeen, King’s College and the Marischal College, was coming to the fore. “Know all men,” he says, in a letter to Professor Campbell, “that I am a Fusionist.”
In February, 1858, he was still engaged on Saturn’s rings, while hard at work during the same time with his classes. He had established a voluntary class for his students of the previous year, and was reading with them Newton’s “Lunar Theory and Astronomy.” This was followed by “Electricity and Magnetism,” Faraday’s book being the backbone of everything, “as he himself is the nucleus of everything electric since 1830.”
In February, 1858, he announced his engagement to Katherine Mary Dewar, the daughter of the Principal of Marischal College.
“Dear Aunt” (he says,[28] February 18th, 1858), “this comes to tell you that I am going to have a wife....
“Don’t be afraid; she is not mathematical, but there are other things besides that, and she certainly won’t stop mathematics. The only one that can speak as an eye-witness is Johnnie, and he only saw her when we were both trying to act the indifferent. We have been trying it since, but it would not do, and it was not good for either.”