82 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IV. 



for a long while. I expected you would have let us know, 

 and the only event of sufficient importance to have pre- 

 vented you from doing so, that occurred to me, was that 

 perhaps, by your close application, you had so etherealized 

 yourself, that you had evanished through your window in a 

 flash of genius, and were perhaps at the moment, when my 

 cogitations were employed about you, twinkling on the tail 

 of the Great Bear. I was debating with myself whether 

 to put it beyond doubt, by a personal examination of the 

 heavens, when aunt's letter arrived, and certified me that 

 you had at last been put in possession of the great object 

 of your ambition. And what was that 1 Two letters of the 

 alphabet ! Nor would this reward which you proposed to 

 yourself have been so contemptible, if those said letters 

 had been out-of-the-way ones, an A and a Q, two Q'S, etc. 

 but as for an M and a D, two of the most commonplace 

 members of the A B c, to think that they should have 

 been so desired, I should say you were the victim of 

 monomania, though I could scarcely designate by the term 

 70;wmania what is equalled in its melancholy nature only 

 by its universality. But when we pass from the mere letters 

 to what they may imply, how much truth do we find con- 

 tained in them ! Passing over the common explication, 

 Doctor of Medicine, we have firstly (synonymous with it), 

 Man of Decoctions ; secondly, Dedicated to Manslaughter, 

 Deliverer of Many, Deluder of More, Death of Most, and 

 lastly a more agreeable truth, that being a Doctor you are 

 Marriageable. These, especially those preceding the last, 

 I would present to your attention, hoping that the con- 

 sciousness of what is thus implied in the Degree you have 

 obtained may, like oil upon the waters, serve to moderate 

 the feelings of your joy, and ever, like the aforesaid oil, 

 remain uppermost in your mind. You will now be able, 



