WII.SON, the: man 123 



of its little heart showed it to be in the most ex- 

 treme agonies of fear. I had intended to kill it, 

 in order to fix it in the claws of a stuffed owl, but 

 happening to spill a few drops of water near where 

 it was tied, it lapped it up with such eagerness 

 and looked in my face with such an eye of suppli- 

 cating terror, as perfectly overcame me. I im- 

 mediately untied it, and returned it to life and 

 liberty. * * * Insignificant as the object 

 was, I felt at that moment the sweet sensations 

 that mercy leaves on the mind when she triumphs 

 over cruelty." Though this occurred in his later 

 years it is characteristic of the humaneness of his 

 whole life. 



Let us turn now from the young Scotchman to 

 the mature American. We shall find that though 

 time has plowed deep furrows in the face and in 

 the soul of the man, yet this has only made the 

 flowers — the virtues of his character — blossom 

 more beautifully. 



Faithful as he ever was to his own ideals of life, 

 yet the Wilson that died at the age of forty-seven, 

 in Philadelphia, was in many ways different from 

 the young man of twenty-eight who disembarked 

 from the Szvift in 1794. Not only had he schooled 

 himself with rigorous constancy in those studies 

 in which he was conscious of being most deficient, 

 but life itself with its hardships and experiences 

 had disciplined him in many things. We have re- 

 marked on a strain of coarseness in his early 

 Scotch writings which was characteristic of many 

 of the writers with whom he was familiar; not a 

 line that he wrote in America but is as pure and 



