posterity.  One of the chief interests of his life was their training and education.  All in turn were sent to Scotland for their chief schooling.  The eldest son, John, born in 1777, and his sister Christine, some three years older, lived in Edinburgh with aunts who showed exhaustless kindness and interest.  Nairne was grateful, and writing from Malbaie on August 27th, 1791, he says:  “[I] am glad of an opportunity, my dear Christine and Jack, to remind you both in the strongest manner I am able of the gratitude and assiduous Duty you owe to your Aunts and other Relations for admitting you into their family and also for the attention they are pleased to bestow on your education.”  Upon his children he imposes indeed counsels of perfection not easy to fulfil; “Remember it’s my injunctions and absolute orders to you both to have always an obedient temper to your superiors ... to receive every reprimand with submission and attention as it can only be intended for your benefit in order to give you a valuable character which of all things is the greatest blessing both for this world and the next; besides you must consider that you are never to indulge yourselves in any sort of indolence or laziness but to rise early in the morning to be the more able to fulfil your Duty....  As to you, Jack, I expect to see you a Gallant and honourable fellow that will always scorn to tell the least lie in your life.  It was well done to answer Captain Fraser [Malcolm Fraser, a Lieutenant in 1762, is still only a Captain in 1791!] with which he was well pleased....  Both of you have I think improved in your writing which gives me pleasure.”  He adds regretfully to Christine:  “I cannot send you a muff this year but perhaps I may do so next year.”  The letter closes with a modest list of purchases to be sent out from Edinburgh for Malbaie:  “one piece of Calico for two gowns; one piece of calico for children; three pieces of linen (for shirts), two of which coarse and the other a little finer; one yard of cambrick; five yards of muslin (for caps and Handkerchiefs); six yards of lace (for caps); twelve yards of different ribbons, three pairs of worsted stockings and three pairs of cotton stockings for myself.”

Jack was to follow a military career, and he entered the army when a youth of sixteen or seventeen.  His first active service was in the West Indies, after war with revolutionary France broke out, and the dangers of that climate gave his father some anxiety; all will be well, he hopes, if Jack continues to take a certain “powder of the Jesuits’ Bark”; above all “the best rules are temperance and sobriety”; then “the same gracious Power who protected me in many dangers through the course of three Wars will also vouchsafe protection to you through this one.”  In 1795, when Jack was only eighteen, his corps was back in England and, through the influence of a distant relative, General Graeme, with the Duke of York, Commander in Chief of the Army and all powerful