t the entire assembly, and,
having lost his point by an overwhelming majority, was overheard
muttering to himself, "Convicted but not convinced."[72]

After their high controversies in the Literary Society and their
keener but less noble contentions in the Senate Hall, the Glasgow
professors used to unbend their bows again in the simple
convivialities of "Mr. Robin Simson's Club." Mr. Robin Simson was the
venerable Professor of Mathematics, equally celebrated and beloved,
known through all the world for his rediscovery of the porisms of
Euclid, but in Glasgow College--whose bounds he rarely quitted--the
delight of all hearts for the warmth, breadth, and uprightness of his
character, for the charming simplicity of his manner, and the richness
of his weighty and sparkling conversation. It was his impressions of
Simson that first gave Smith the idea that mathematicians possessed a
specific amiability and happiness of disposition which placed them
above the jealousies and vanities and intrigues of the lower world.
For fifty years Simson's life was spent almost entirely within the two
quadrangles of Glasgow College; between the rooms he worked and slept
in, the tavern at the gate, where he ate his meals, and the College
gardens, where he took his daily walk of a fixed number of hundred
paces, of which, according to some well-known anecdotes, he always
kept count as he went, even under the difficulties of interruption.
Mr. Robin, who was unmarried, never went into general society, but
after his geometrical labours were over finished the day with a rubber
of whist in the tavern at the College gate. Here one or another of the
professors used to join him, and the little circle eventually ripened
into a regular club, which met for supper at this tavern every Friday
evening, and went out to Anderston for dinner on Saturday. It was then
known as the Anderston Club, as well as by its former designation from
the name of its founder. Anderston was at that time quite a country
village. It was very soon afterwards made busy enough with the cotton
factory of James Monteith, but at this time Tames Monteith's father
was using the spot as a market garden. It contained, however, a cosy
little "change-house," capable of providing the simple dinner then in
vogue. The dinner consisted of only one course. Mr. M'George says the
first dinner of two courses ever given in Glasgow was given in 1786;
and Principal M'Cormick of St. Andrews, writing Dr.