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148 presence and bearing in the classroom was a large element in a liberal education. By all his colleagues he was esteemed as a man of most sterling honour, a staunch friend, and a most humorous and delightful companion…. There certainly never was a household known to either of us in which the spirit of racy and original humour and fun was so exuberant and spontaneous in every member of it, as that of which the Professor and his wife—the most gifted and brilliant, and most like her father of the three gifted daughters of "Christopher North"—were the heads. Our evenings there generally ended in the Professor's study, where he was always ready to discuss, either from a serious or humorous point of view (not without congenial accompaniment), the various points of his system till the morning was well advanced.'

Ferrier's daughter writes of the house at West Park: 'It was an old-fashioned, rough cast or "harled" house standing on the road in Market Street, but approached through a small green gate and a short avenue of trees—trees that were engraven on the heart and memory from childhood. The garden at the back still remains. In our time it was a real old-fashioned Scotch garden, well stocked with "berries," pears, and apples; quaint grass walks ran through it, and a summer-house with stained-glass windows stood in a corner. West Park was built on a site once occupied by the Grey Friars, and I am not romancing when I say that bones and coins were known to have been discovered in the garden even in our time. Our home was socially a very amusing and happy one, though my father lived a good deal apart from us, coming down from his dear old library occasionally in the evenings to join the family circle.' This family circle