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‘Fight on, my men, says Sir Andrew Barton,
I am hurt, but I am not slaine;
I’ll lie me down and bleed a-while,
And then I’ll rise and fight againe.’

Another piece of advice; almost my last. For reasons you may guess I must give this in a low voice. Beware of M’Connachie. When I look in a mirror now it is his face I see. I speak with his voice. I once had a voice of my own, but nowadays I hear it from far away only, a melancholy, lonely, lost little pipe. I wanted to be an explorer, but he willed otherwise. You will all have your M’Connachies luring you off the high road. Unless you are constantly on the watch, you will find that he has slowly pushed you out of yourself and taken your place. He has rather done for me. I think in his youth he must somehow have guessed the future and been fleggit by it, flichtered from the nest like a bird, and so our eggs were left, cold. He has clung to me, less from mischief than for companionship; I half like him and his penny whistle; with all his faults he is as Scotch as peat; he whispered to me just now that you elected him, not me, as your Rector.

A final passing thought. Were an old student given an hour in which to revisit the St. Andrews of his day, would he spend more than half of it at lectures? He is more likely to be heard clattering up bare stairs in search of old companions. But if you could choose your hour from all the five hundred years of this seat of learning, wandering at your will from one age to another, how would you spend it? A fascinating theme; so many notable shades at once astir that St. Leonard’s and St. Mary’s grow murky with them. Hamilton, Melville, Sharpe, Chalmers, down to Herkless, that distinguished Principal, ripe scholar and warm friend, the loss of whom I deeply deplore with you. I think if that hour were mine, and though at St. Andrews he was but a passer-by, I would give a handsome part of it to a walk with Doctor Johnson. I should like to have the time of day passed to me in twelve languages by the Admirable Crichton. A wave of the hand to Andrew Lang; and then for the archery butts with the gay Montrose, all a-ruffled and ringed, and in the gallant St. Andrews student manner, continued as I understand to this present day, scattering largess as he rides along,

‘But where is now the courtly troupe
That once went riding by?
I miss the curls of Canteloupe,
The laugh of Lady Di.’

We have still left time for a visit to a house in South Street, hard by St. Leonard’s. I do not mean the house you mean. I am a Knox man. But little will that avail, for M’Connachie is a Queen Mary man. So, after all, it is at her door we chap, a last futile effort to bring that woman to heel. One more house of call, a student’s room, also in South Street. I have chosen my student, you see, and I have chosen well; him that sang–

‘Life has not since been wholly vain,
And now I bear
Of wisdom plucked from joy and pain
Some slender share.

‘But howsoever rich the store,
I’d lay it down
To feel upon my back once more
The old red gown.’

Well, we have at last come to an end. Some of you may remember when I began this address; we are all older now. I thank you for your patience. This is my first and last public appearance, and I never could or would have made it except to a gathering of Scottish students. If I have concealed my emotions in addressing you it is only the thrawn national way that deceives everybody except Scotsmen. I have not been as dull as I could have wished to be; but looking at your glowing faces cheerfulness and hope would keep breaking through. Despite the imperfections of your betters we leave you a great inheritance, for which others will one day call you to account. You come of a race of men the very wind of whose name has swept to the ultimate seas. Remember–

‘Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves. . . .’

Mighty are the Universities of Scotland, and they will prevail. But even in your highest exultations never forget that they are not four, but five. The greatest of them is the poor, proud homes you come out of, which said so long ago: ‘There shall be education in this land.’ She, not St. Andrews, is the oldest University in Scotland, and all the others are her whelps.

In bidding you good-bye, my last words must be of the lovely virtue. Courage, my children and ‘greet the unseen with a cheer.’ ‘Fight on, my men,’ said Sir Andrew Barton. Fight on–you– for the old red gown till the whistle blows.