84 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. I V. 



the interest you always took in our after-dinner disquisitions 

 anent guns and engines, and clocks and sun-dials, I believe 

 you will be much interested. Indeed, you should let no 

 opportunity slip of watching the ingenious mechanical 

 contrivances which abound in a city like Paisley, where 

 so many fabrics are woven. I look back with pleasure on 

 the time I spent when I was your age, and for years after 

 that epoch, in becoming acquainted with the construction 

 and purposes of machinery. For I found it then, not only 

 an innocent amusement and a profitable occupation of hours 

 spent idly by others ; but npw^ when for the latter years of 

 my life my time has been given almost entirely to other 

 things, I have still more felt the value of such occupations 

 of time ; for the observation of machinery in motion, the 

 mental struggles before the mode of action is quite under- 

 stood, the admiration of the ingenuity shown in devising 

 beautiful contrivances to effect desired ends, and still more 

 the endeavour to imitate such or similar mechanical adap- 

 tations, develop the imagination and the powers of re- 

 flection, it fosters and ripens ingenuity, and all the while 

 exercises on the mind a silent but salutary dominion, which 

 quickens its most useful powers. Do then, try to fathom 

 the mysteries of wheels and cranks, and rods and pinions, 

 and strive to acquaint yourself with the object for which 

 the wheels move at all, and then the means by which the 

 desired motion is effected." 



On the day following the ceremony of "capping," he 

 hastens to share the news with the " dear and only brother," 

 who so fully sympathized with every incident in George's 

 career. 



"My last letter was very hurried, ill-arranged, and ill 

 written the present will be written more leisurely, and will 



