8o MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IV. 



of fully doctorating myself. Tell any ladies who are about 

 to write to me, that any epistles addressed Mr. Geo. Wilson 

 will be sent elsewhere." 



" MY DEAR SISTER MARY, When I last wrote to you, I 

 told you I was a physician grub, a caterpillar eating of the 

 coarse food which suits the palate of an imperfect animal. 

 I am now a winged butterfly, that is, a PASSED PHYSICIAN. 

 (Three cheers and a hurrah !) 



" Yesterday, between the hours of one and three o'clock, 

 I underwent the transformation, and emerged from my 

 chrysalis state, leaving my case (i.e. .21) behind me, and 

 soared aloft (that is, walked, I did not very well know how) 

 into the blue empyrean (i.e. along the pavement leading 

 from the College to Gayfield Square), in a mood of mind 

 which only those who have tasted of the horrors of an 

 eternal caterpillarity (i.e. of being a sticked doctor) hovering 

 before them, can appreciate. But I will close my wings, as 

 yet un soiled and unfeathered, and come down to the earth, 

 that it is to say, I will remember that ' this is my right hand, 

 and that is my left,' that I am sitting in an arm-chair, writing 

 to my dearly beloved sister Mary, who is recovering her 

 health among the breezes that float over the rugged Ochils. 



"Well, then, in calm and sober seriousness, I am now 

 an M.D. with bright and beautiful visions of gold-headed 

 canes held out to my grasp \ of long, tapering fingers, put 

 past muslin curtains, that the doctor may feel the fair 

 invalid's pulse; of tendered guineas, and received bank 

 notes, beside honours showered on my laurelled head ; 

 and a tail of names added to my Christian cognomen, 

 sufficiently long to draw a saint from heaven, if he got en- 

 tangled among the A's, and B's, and Q's, and S.S.S. 



" I am overflowing with the milk of human kindness to 



