250 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IX. 



are lots of fun in me yet." After the visit was past, he 

 laments the inability to enjoy his friend's society, for " those 

 two demons, rheumatism and dyspepsia, had gone shares for 

 my poor body, and I was ill at ease. Night after night I 

 spend in prosecuting a discovery, the steps of which are, 

 that I awake in pain on one side, and after a period of 

 vague uneasiness, say sleepily to myself, * It is the other side 

 on which you sleep quietly/ and so I turn to the other side, 

 and after three minutes find out I was mistaken, and that it 

 was the other side, and the other follows the other, till 

 uneasy slumber puts an end to the unceasing revolutions. 

 One is poor company after such nights ; but I hope when 

 I next see you I shall be reasonably well." 



The humorous way in which his illnesses were frequently 

 mentioned could not fail to provoke a smile, even from the 

 most tenderly sympathizing. One or two specimens must 

 suffice. " I have not, like some unhappy people, an aching 

 void, but an aching plenum, i.e. I am full of aches. I might 

 quote, as suitable to my case, the words of the beautiful 

 Scotch song, ' I leaned my back against an aik,' only 

 modernizing the last word into ache, as of course it should 

 be." Being unable to join a proposed excursion, he ex- 

 plains the reason : " To tell you the truth, I have been for 

 some time tired of lecturing behind a table (like a shopman 

 selling goods over a counter), and I thought I should like 

 to try Curtain Lectures for a change. Accordingly, I took 

 care to catch a cold; and fell to coughing, and finally betook 

 myself to bed the night before last, and as the curtain 

 course is not yet finished, I remain there still, lecturing to 

 a very attentive, sympathizing, and appreciating audience, 

 consisting of my bedfellow Grim, who looks upon coughing 

 as a kind of barking, and thinks it quite in his way." In 

 allusion to what he had suffered at the hands of-surgeons, 



