382 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. IX. 



After returning home some weeks later, he writes to Dr. 

 Cairns " a, few lines, for my arm is still very stiff, and aches with 

 a little work, to thank you for your kindness, not in formal 

 words, but none the less with a grateful heart. I hope I have 

 learned something more of God's judgments and mercies than I 

 ever knew before. I went to Kothesay in a humbled spirit, 

 craving most of all rest, and seeking to spend a season of ex- 

 haustion and enforced quietude in self-examination and sub- 

 mission to God. In this spirit the trial He sent came not as 

 something strange, but as if it fitted into the daily discipline of 

 the life I was leading. And now I look back on the last two 

 months with a more lowly, chastened, and grateful heart than 

 I felt towards my Saviour before, and desire more than ever to 

 confide in Him." " I got great good," he says to Mr. Macmillan, 

 " from the long, quiet, and often sleepless hours. How soon, 

 alas ! the whirl of business banishes the thoughts that were so 

 welcome in the silence and lowliness of sickness ! How diffi- 

 cult it is to live to Christ in the struggle of daily contention, 

 and to keep one's-self unspotted from the world !" 



Among the friends made by George wherever he went, were 

 little girls from the age of two years upwards. He was a great 

 favourite with them, and promised to marry several when they 

 got the height of his stick. The courtship was chiefly carried 

 on by an exchange of valentines each year, and it did prove a 

 little inconvenient when the young ladies had come so far to 

 years of discretion as to be found taking private measurements 

 of the stick, by which their fitness for matrimony was to be 

 tested. His interest in the children of his relatives and friends 

 was great. While in London in 1854, he spent a night in the 

 house of a fellow-chemist, being almost a stranger to his hostess. 

 Next morning, entering the drawing-room, where she happened 

 to be alone, he said, on bidding her farewell, " Whenever I re- 

 ceive kindness and hospitality from friends who have families, I 

 make a point of remembering their children in my prayers. 

 Yours will be so remembered henceforth." To one of his little 

 brides a tender interest attaches, as the subjoined memoranda 

 show : 



" In the island of Arran, in the summer of 1852, it was our 



