my studies go on heavily, though it has not hitherto interrupted my teaching. I have found air and exercise and a clean stomach the best remedies; but I cannot command the two former as often as I could wish. I am sensible that the air of a crowded class is bad, and often thought of carrying my class to the Common Hall; but I was afraid it might have been construed as a piece of ostentation.'
Reid’s letter of condolence to Dr. David Skene on the death of his father, in September 1767, mentions the loss of his own infant daughter, 'my sweet little Bess,' and also refers to an excursion to Hamilton 'with Mr. Beattie'—the only occasion on which, for more than three months, he had been more than three miles from Glasgow. 'Having time at command,' he had been tempted 'to fall to the tumbling over books; as we have a vast number here which I had not access to see at Aberdeen. But this is a mare magnum, wherein one is tempted by hopes of discoveries to make a tedious voyage, which seldom repays the labour. I have long ago found my memory to be like a vessel that is full: if you pour in more, you lose as much as you gain; and on this account I have a thousand times resolved to give up all pretence to what is called learning, being satisfied that it is more profitable to ruminate on the little I have laid up than to add to the indigested heap. I have had little society, the College people being out of town, and have almost lost the faculty of speaking by disuse. I blame myself for having corresponded so little with my friends at Aberdeen. I wished to try Lumsden's experiment which you was so good as to communicate to me.… A nasty custom I have of chewing tobacco has been the reason of my observing a species of as nasty little animals. I spit in a basin of sawdust, which, when it comes to be drenched, produces a vast number of animals, three
