My election to the Lord Rectorship of St. Andrews in 1902 proved a very important event in my life.  It admitted me to the university world, to which I had been a stranger.  Few incidents in my life have so deeply impressed me as the first meeting of the faculty, when I took my seat in the old chair occupied successively by so many distinguished Lord Rectors during the nearly five hundred years which have elapsed since St. Andrews was founded.  I read the collection of rectorial speeches as a preparation for the one I was soon to make.  The most remarkable paragraph I met with in any of them was Dean Stanley’s advice to the students to “go to Burns for your theology.”  That a high dignitary of the Church and a favorite of Queen Victoria should venture to say this to the students of John Knox’s University is most suggestive as showing how even theology improves with the years.  The best rules of conduct are in Burns.  First there is:  “Thine own reproach alone do fear.”  I took it as a motto early in life.  And secondly: 

    “The fear o’ hell’s a hangman’s whip
    To haud the wretch in order;
    But where ye feel your honor grip,
    Let that aye be your border.”

John Stuart Mill’s rectorial address to the St. Andrews students is remarkable.  He evidently wished to give them of his best.  The prominence he assigns to music as an aid to high living and pure refined enjoyment is notable.  Such is my own experience.

An invitation given to the principals of the four Scotch universities and their wives or daughters to spend a week at Skibo resulted in much joy to Mrs. Carnegie and myself.  The first meeting was attended by the Earl of Elgin, chairman of the Trust for the Universities of Scotland, and Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Secretary for Scotland, and Lady Balfour.  After that “Principals’ Week” each year became an established custom.  They as well as we became friends, and thereby, they all agree, great good results to the universities.  A spirit of cooeperation is stimulated.  Taking my hand upon leaving after the first yearly visit, Principal Lang said: 

“It has taken the principals of the Scotch universities five hundred years to learn how to begin our sessions.  Spending a week together is the solution.”

One of the memorable results of the gathering at Skibo in 1906 was that Miss Agnes Irwin, Dean of Radcliffe College, and great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin, spent the principals’ week with us and all were charmed with her.  Franklin received his first doctor’s degree from St. Andrews University, nearly one hundred and fifty years ago.  The second centenary of his birth was finely celebrated in Philadelphia, and St. Andrews, with numerous other universities throughout the world, sent addresses.  St. Andrews also sent a degree to the great-granddaughter.  As Lord Rector, I was deputed to confer it and place the mantle upon her.  This was done the first evening before a large audience, when more than two hundred addresses were presented.