158 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. VII. 



denly he stopped in the street, and in a few minutes life 

 was extinct. The cause was supposed to be aneurism of 

 the heart. There could scarcely be a more touching sight 

 than when George, pale and feeble, entered the room, and 

 passed slowly on crutches through the crowd to the bed on 

 which the corpse had been laid, to see if it were really true, 

 and not a horrible dream. Alas ! at such times our hearts 

 know the truth, even while the senses try to disbelieve it. 



James Russell at once joined the sad circle, and spent a 

 few days with them. On his departure George wrote, 

 according to promise, to report progress : " I may dismiss 

 myself in a sentence," he says, "by stating that I am ex- 

 cellently well, and my foot mending, to use a peculiarly 

 expressive phrase." 



A few weeks later, a visitor from Glasgow having carried 

 back gloomy accounts to James, he writes re-assuringly, " I 

 am really improving ; I was half expecting I should require 

 a touch of caustic from the surgeons, but things are looking 

 so well that, in the meanwhile, I expect to dispense with 

 their tender mercy. I am out every day ; yesterday I made 

 a tripodal journey round the Willow Grove garden four 

 times. Can I 'give you a better proof that I am really re- 

 covering ? I will hereafter always honestly inform you of my 

 state, but at present I have not seen a surgeon for a fortnight 

 and more, and I have dined out twice within a week. 



" I must make fresh claims on your sympathy with me as 

 one involved in the miseries of 'flitting.' Every day reveals 

 some new and more horrible phasis of the detestable crisis 

 we are in. Blankets, table-covers, even carpets, are taking 

 wings to themselves and fleeing away ; and I have to keep 

 a watchful eye on my crutches, lest they abscond in company 

 with some migrating grate, and I be ' left lamenting.' I 

 cannot say that I am, like Niobe, ' voiceless in my^ woe/ 



