1837-38. ENTERS DR. CHRISTISON'S LABORATORY. 97. 



regarding my safe arrival from your most hospitable city. Some 

 foolish people would at once have called for pen and paper, and 

 before their boots were fairly pulled off, have indited a scanty 

 unreadable scroll, purporting to tell that the steamboat had not 

 blown up, nor its engine gone wrong, nor itself come in colli- 

 sion with another, nor the writer fallen overboard, etc. Then 

 reverting to travels by land, the scrawl would go on to say, that 

 the horses did not run off, nor the coach tumble over a cliff, nor 

 the traces break, nor the wheels suffer any mishap, and so on. 

 But I am far too much of a philosopher to write any such non- 

 sense, nor am I about to bore you to death with a melancholy 

 recital of my being almost frozen to an icicle, and nevertheless 

 nearly tumbling off the coach with sleep. I have fortunately 

 forgotten these trivial and temporary inconveniences, and the 

 reminiscence of them would be of no possible use to either of us, 

 so I meddle not with it any more. After the sobering influence 

 had duly improved me, I set off on Monday morning to the 

 College, and the first person I beheld was my most respected 

 instructor, Dr. Christison. After shaking hands with the worthy 

 professor, and making inquiries after his health, I whipped off 

 my surtout, and on with my old coat, I say my old coat, 

 but it stands in the same relation to my back, that Elijah's 

 mantle did to Elisha, being the legacy of a departed (to the 

 Continent) friend, and I fell to a very curious case of attempted 

 poisoning, by putting vitriol in tea, in the analysis of which 

 I occupied the whole of the first day. Since then I have 

 been engaged up to the period when I write, with two deli- 

 cate processes for the purification of Sulphuric Acid, one for 

 the more accurate preparation of Tinctures of Barks, not to 

 mention the analysis of Laudanum, and assistance in opening 

 a box from Ceylon, containing roots, fruits, leaves, etc., from 

 that most interesting place, sent by a lady for Dr. Christison's 

 Museum. 



" Situated as I am just now, buried in the difficulties of 

 several of the physical sciences, changing from pharmacy to 

 chemistry, from chemistry to physiology, or taking a refresh- 

 ment in the subtilties of logic, or the elegancies of rhetoric, 

 you must not expect my epistle to be very rich in what may 



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