favourite Newfoundland dog Brontë was poisoned by the students as an act of retaliation.
Murder trials had always a fascination for Ferrier. On one occasion he read aloud to his children De Quincey's essay, 'Murder as a Fine Art,' which so terrified his youngest daughter that she could hardly bring herself to leave her father's library for bed. Somewhat severe to his sons, to his daughters Ferrier was specially kind and indulgent, helping them with their German studies, reading Schiller's plays to them, and when little children telling them old-world fairy tales. A present of Grimm's Tales, brought by her father after a visit to London, was, she tells us, a never-to-be- forgotten joy to the recipient.
The charm of the West Park house was spoken of by all the numerous young men permitted to frequent its hospitable board. There was a wonderful concoction known by the name of 'Bishop,' against whose attraction one who suffered by its potency says that novices were warned, more especially in view of a certain sunk fence in the immediate vicinity which had afterwards to be avoided. The jokes that passed at these entertainments, which were never dull, are past and gone,—their piquancy would be gone even could they be reproduced,—but the impression left on the minds of those who shared in them is ineffaceable, and is as vivid now as forty years ago.
There was a custom, now almost extinct, of keeping books of so-called 'Confessions,' in which the contributors had the rather formidable task of filling up their likes or dislikes for the entertainment of their owners. In Mrs. Sellar's album Ferrier made several interesting 'confessions'—whether we take them au grand serieux
