46 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. III. 



coming home to-day to find a parcel awaiting me, addressed 

 in a very pretty lady's hand, and, as it was easy to know, 



from Miss . I opened it with great glee, expecting 



an answer to a very odd, whimsical letter sent to thank her 

 for a present of bottles ; but how amazed and aghast was I 

 to find in it that my poor friend, Samuel Brown, had been 

 seized with fever the day he should have left for Berlin, and 

 that ' accounts are very unfavourable indeed.' Poor fellow ! 

 I don't know what I should do if I lost him, almost the 

 only friend I have except my brother ; gained as a friend, 

 though an acquaintance before, at a time when returning 

 health and energy had sent me to the careful study of 

 the physical sciences. I was delighted to meet in him 

 one who so fervently reciprocated an enthusiastic love 

 for such pursuits. The gaining of such a friend was a 

 stimulus to more active study, and a most potent motive to 

 steady perseverance, and many a day-dream of the future, 

 and many an air-built castle, had him for its hero. And 

 now, when I every day expected a letter from him, to be 

 stunned and startled by such terrible news ! I prayed to 

 God for him every night, and perhaps God was beneficially 

 watching over him, and preventing his reaching Berlin, 

 where cholera is very bad. It has quite unsettled me ; the 

 idea of studying what I thought to have done chemistry 

 this evening seems cruel, while a brother-chemist is lying in 

 the fangs of fever. I cannot open my books, and instead 

 am in a listless, melancholy mood of mind. Troubles have 

 come thick on me : my brother gone to London to buffet 

 with the distractions of that great city, my sweet sister Jessie 

 lying ill of smallpox, my friend Brown dangerously ill of 

 fever, and poor Dobbie [an artist friend] dreading the 

 development of consumption. I have been out at Mr. 

 Bobbie's this afternoon, and feigning a mirth I did not feel, 



