98 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. III. 



either amuse or instruct, the more so, that I have lost my brother, 

 who sharpened every faculty as ' iron sharpeneth iron/ I have 

 no one now to laugh and joke with ; or, if a feeling of lonesome- 

 ness comes over me, and I cast my eyes round for a familial- 

 countenance, they fall on a grim, grinning battered skull, sur- 

 mounted by two cross-bones, the adornments of my mantel- 

 piece. Nevertheless, I am not to be outdone in grinning by a 

 skull, and when any odd idea comes from the caverns of my rest- 

 less head, I grin and show my teeth, and a great many more too, 

 in a far more joyous fashion than the said lifeless cranium 

 can do. 



" Whatever the reason, medical men are never more at fault 

 than in reasoning on their own disorders. I seem to have bid 

 good-bye to a considerable portion of my senses, not to talk of 

 bottles, messages, appointments, and articles of dress, forgotten, 

 misapplied, or neglected ; of a letter put into the post-office 

 marked paid, thrust into the common receiving aperture, and 

 safely lodged at the bottom, before I remembered that I had 

 written in great characters the ' paid ' so cheering to the receiver, 

 but in this case, destined only to raise the compassion, or awake 

 the indignation of the young lady, its recipient, at the melancholy 

 poverty of the writer. .... 



" Now I think I know the reason of all this mental absence, 

 and as you are a discreet young lady, I shall not scruple in con- 

 fidence to tell you. I am over head and ears in love, and the 

 object of my attachment so thoroughly engrosses my thoughts, 

 that I have scarce a speculation to give to anything else, and 

 though I have wooed her steadfastly, she, with the coyness and 

 fickleness of her sex, gives me but doubtful signs of a recipro- 

 city of affection, and I feel that I make but small progress in 

 her esteem ; and eager as I am to ingratiate myself with her, 

 and high as I should esteem the honour of having a most 

 thorough acquaintance with her, I know that many of my friends 

 would imagine her a very unfit companion, and I can conceive 

 you saying that although a lady might occasionally converse 

 with her, a familiar intimacy would be most undesirable, and I 

 believe you to have more than common charity in such a case 

 as this. Nevertheless, she is descended from a noble and influ- 



