4: MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



tfceuvre. So much was it appreciated, that he was continually 

 called on to repeat it. Standing upon a chair, arranged to look as 

 like a pulpit as possible, he would address his juvenile congrega- 

 tion, along with the more mature audience of nurses and other 

 servants assembled to listen to his warning voice. The text chosen 

 was one from his own fertile brain, drawn from that field of expe- 

 rience in which he was already becoming an adept, and handled 

 not without shrewd application to moral duties. These were the 

 words : " There was a fish, and it was a deil o' a fish, and it was 

 ill to its young anes." In this allegory of life he displayed both 

 pathos and humor, drawing a contrast between good and evil 

 parents that excited sympathy and laughter, while the sermon was 

 delivered with a vehemence of natural eloquence that, in a boy of 

 live years old, may well have entitled him to be looked upon as a 

 genius. 



One other anecdote may here be given, which he used to tell 

 with much humor. As a child, he was very fond of drawing, an 

 accomplishment he regretted in after life having laid aside, before 

 he had acquired sufficient skill to enable him to sketch from nature. 

 One day he had copied a tiger, and, no doubt, having given to the 

 animal considerable characteristic vigor, his mother — with natural 

 mother's pride — treasured the specimen highly. He was not aware 

 of the sensation this juvenile success in art had created, till one 

 morning a visitor was announced when he Avas present, and was 

 scarcely seated, ere, to his surprise, she was accosted by Mrs. Wil- 

 son with the words, pronounced in broad Scotch, as was the manner 

 in those days with many well-educated people, "Have ye seen oure 

 John's teegar ?" when forthwith the " teegar" was exhibited to the 

 admiring eyes of her guest. It was not long before " oure John's 

 teegar" was well known in Paisley.* 



The time had now come when the training of the nursery was to 

 be followed by regular education at school, and John was commit- 

 ted to the tuition of Mr. James Peddie, English teacher, Paisley. 

 To a child who loved to learn, the drudgery of a first apprentice- 

 ship at school would never be irksome. A year or two with Mr. 



* In Flight First of " The Moors," I find an allusion to this work of art. " Strange that, with all 

 our love of nature and of art, wo never were a painter. True that in boyhood we were no con- 

 temptible hand at a lion or a tiger— and sketches by us of such cats springing or preparing to 

 spring in keelivine, dashed off some fifty or sixty years ago, might well make Edwin Landseer 

 stare." 



