An Edinburgh Eleven by James Matthew Barrie

Just as I opened my desk to write enthusiastically of Tait, I remembered having recently deciphered a pencil note about him, in my own handwriting, on the cover of Masson's "Chronological List," which I still keep by me. I turned to the note to see if there was life in it yet. "Walls," it says, "got 2s. for T. and T. at Brown's, 16 Walker Street. " I don't recall Walls, but T. and T. was short for "Thomson and Tait's Elements of Natural Philosophy" (elements! ), better known in my year as the "Student's First Glimpse of Hades. " Evidently Walls sold his copy, but why did I take such note of the address? I fear T. and T. is one of the "Books Which Have Helped Me. " This somewhat damps my ardor.

When Tait was at Cambridge, it was flung in the face of the mathematicians that they never stood high in Scriptural knowledge. Tait and another were the two of whom one must be first wrangler, and they agreed privately to wipe this stigma from mathematics. They did it by taking year about the prize which was said to hang out of their reach. It is always interesting to know of professors who have done well in Biblical knowledge. All Scottish students at the English universities are not so successful. I knew a Snell man who was sent back from the Oxford entrance exam., and he always held himself that the Biblical questions had done it.