136 The Wilson Bulletin — No. 61. 



would justly impose silence on me. My disposition is to love 

 those who love me with all the warmth of enthusiasm, but to feel 

 with the keenest sensibility the smallest appearance of neglect 

 or contempt from those I regard. Of your friendship I have 

 a thousand times been truly proud ; have boasted of your inti- 

 macy with me and your professional abilities, almost wherever 

 I went. I have poured my soul into your bosom. If I have 

 met, or only supposed that I have, in the moments of anxiety 

 and deep mental perturbation, met with cold indifference from 

 the cnly quarter I expected the sweets of friendship, they lit- 

 tle know my heart who would expect it to make no impression 

 on me." 



February 14, 1802 : "Dear Sir. It is too much. I cannot 

 part with you after what you have said. I renounce with 

 pleasure every harsh thought I hastily entertained of you. . . . 

 I never spent ten weeks more unhappy than these have been, 

 and it will be sonie time before my mind recovers itself. Past 

 hopes, present difficulties, and a gloomy futurity, have almost 

 deranged my ideas, and too deeply affected me." 



"Of actual misconduct there is no evidence whatever ; and in 

 the too frequent instances of similar attachment in the lives of 

 eminent nien. very few indeed have acted with the same 

 promptness and spirit of honor as Wilson, who, as we shall 

 see, at once sacrificed his situation, and effectually and forever 

 separated himself from the object of his regard." ^ 



Yet we find him in February, 1806, planning with his 

 nephew, William Duncan, now schoolmaster at Alilestown, to 

 go to that place to take part in a political debate ; which was 

 not carri'ed into effect for various reasons. 



The truth-loving student does not have to read between the 

 lines to infer that Wilson's conduct in the above peculiar in- 

 stances, while at Milestown, lacked self-restraint, and was open 

 to censure, even while it is shrouded in considerable mystery. 

 The last letters were written from Gray's Ferry, Philadelphia. 

 Time and absence wrought a partial cure, and he writes on 

 July loth, 1802 : "My harp is new strung, and my soul glows 

 with more ardour than ever to emulate those immortal bards 

 ^ Paton's Wilson the Oruithologist. 



