230 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IX. 



had been some days before, and I was out in the evening 

 at the School of Arts, where I was detained from seven 

 till after ten o'clock. . . . Though her agony was great, 

 she expressed calmly and distinctly her faith in Christ . . . 

 comforted herself with passages of her own remembering, 

 and prayed audibly and earnestly, referring at intervals to 

 what an awful thing it would have been had she then 

 required to think for the first time of going to judgment. 



" How the unkindnesses I have shown her come back on 

 me now ! To think that yesterday was the last day that I 

 was to spend with her on this earth, and I did not know it 

 A round of necessary, but trifling duties, kept me from her ; 

 yet I loved Mary better than I loved anything else in this 

 world. For the last six years we had been greatly together. 

 We knew each other so well, and she was so fond, so kind, 

 so self-denying, so generous, so noble in all respects, so 

 devoted, that now that she has followed James, I feel 

 alone. Nobody can ever be to me what she was. I can- 

 not estimate my obligations to her. I have leant so long 

 on her that, now that her support is gone, I feel as lame 

 in spirit as I am in body. Pray for me, my dear friend, 

 and her dear friend. Pray for me ; I need your prayers. 

 It seems but a black dream, and yet it is a reality to make 

 dark a lifetime. I will not be long of joining her." 



Three months later, in a " hasty laboratory note " to the 

 same friend, he says, "I have enjoyed more, latterly, I 

 think, of the sense of the Holy Spirit's help than I have 

 ever known before. Mary's memory is full of blessed asso- 

 ciations. The succeeding two months will, I trust, yield 

 me still more leisure for sacred things." 



"December, 1847. 



" Pray for me much, my dearest friend. I see few, very 

 few, devout people. From the public services of the 



