xii PREFACE TO THE CANADIAN EDITION. 



nerves in that impressionable state peculiar to sickness in a 

 tropical climate ; suddenly Wilson enters the cabin and 

 proclaims in his hollow tones, " If you please, my Lord, 

 the Corpse is come aboard ! " by which dignified but depres- 

 sing title he was pleased to designate a mummy which my 

 people had just brought down from a rock-temple I had 

 recently discovered. 



His bedside visits, however, were not always so inno- 

 cuous. On our arrival at Beirut some months afterwards, 

 we found a traveller at the hotel stricken with Syrian fever 

 — a disease which seldom pardons. The patient's life 

 hung by a thread. The doctors had enjoined the most 

 absolute quiet, and every inmate of the house passed his 

 door breathless and on tiptoe. One kind lady, who had 

 constituted herself his nurse, was allowed to visit him. But 

 on an unlucky Sunday afternoon she was absent for a brief 

 half hour at Church. 



Forthwith Wilson stole upon his victim, and gliding into 

 a chair at the bed-head, whispered forth at intervals these 

 sentences of dole : " Well, sir ! you do look bad ! " " Syrian 

 fever, I understand, sir?" "Ah! they say people don't 

 recover from Syrian fever." " I am Wilson, sir." " The 

 Wilson ! " with which ghostlike revelation of his identity 

 he concluded his dismal Avatar, the particulars of which 

 the sick man happily survived to relate. 



I could multiply these paragraphs by the relation of a 

 hundred similar traits of my poor follower's saturnine 

 humour. It would be more difficult to give an adequate 

 idea of his kindness and affectionate serviceableness, his 



