1854- HABITUAL PIECE OF MIND. 271 



between fifty and sixty ounces, which is rather too much. 

 It is a strange feeling your blood gushing from you. I had 

 no pain, and only slight sickness, and I felt very calm." 



" Since I broke my arm, I have been disciplined into a 

 mental peace I never knew before, and in spite of fluctua- 

 tions such as must occur so long as this mortal body is 

 carried about, I look with composure to what God may 

 send. I have been getting knocked down, and then up 

 again at short intervals, for the last twelve years, and have 

 more than once felt that I could have been thankful had 

 the coup de grace been given ; but always with convalescence, 

 the cowardly, unchristian desire to escape the trenches de- 

 parts, and I go forwards to Sebastopol again. Valetudina- 

 rians like me are apt to become selfish and lazy, and I must 

 fight against the tendency." And on March ist he adds, 

 " I am better, and convinced that the doctors mistook my 

 case ; although the loss of the blood was equally weakening 

 whencesoever it came. It would have been poor consola- 

 tion to have had as an epitaph 



" Here lies George Wilson, 

 Overtaken by Nemesis ; 

 He died, not of Haemoptysis, 

 But of Haematemesis."! 



While convalescent, but still feeble, there was handed to 

 him on his birthday, as it happened an official packet, 

 containing his appointment as Director of the Scottish In- 

 dustrial Museum, then in contemplation. " A week before 

 I got the appointment," he tells Daniel, " I had no ex- 

 pectation of it. The talk regarding it began nearly a year 



i By mistaking his case is meant the supposition at first held, that 

 the hemorrhage proceeded from the lungs, for which haemoptysis is the 

 technical name, while hsematemesis means bleeding from the stomach. 



