I

In congratulating you on a successful career of fifty years since the foundation of the college, we take special pleasure in the fact that we know that it was the lot of our former alumni, John Rankin Brown and Hugh MacKenzie, to be present in your college at its birth and at its maturity: thus it has happened that the love of liberal studies and philosophy implanted in Scotsmen from old flourished anew among men separated from us by the whole earth.

Now, because in cherishing them you cherish this their alma mater, we find such pleasure that we feel not that we are sending this letter as it were to men unknown, or known only by hear-say, but that in a spirit of almost brotherly affection we are greeting friends and relations. Farewell.