408 MEMOIR OF GEOKGE WILSON. CHA1'. X. 



that I may be kept from fainting or failing till He calls me." 

 Ten days later he writes to Daniel from his rooms in town, hav- 

 ing resumed duty to the extent of one lecture a day. " I had a 

 narrow escape from death, for the loss of a little more blood 

 would have ended matters ; and indeed I lost between fifty and 

 sixty ounces, which is rather too much. It is a strange feeling 

 your blood gushing from you. I had no pain, and only slight 

 sickness, and I felt very calm." 



" Since I broke my arm, I have been disciplined into a mental 

 peace I never knew before, and in spite of fluctuations such 

 as must occur so long as this mortal body is carried about, 

 I look with composure to what God may send. I have been 

 getting knocked down, and then up again at short intervals for 

 the last twelve years, and have more than once felt that I could 

 have been thankful had the coup de grace been given; but al- 

 ways with convalescence, the cowardly, unchristian desire to 

 escape the trenches departs, and I go forwards to Sebastopol 

 again. Valetudinarians like me are apt to become selfish and 

 lazy, and I must fight against the tendency." And on March 1st 

 he adds, " I am better, and convinced that the doctors mistook 

 my case ; although the loss of the blood w r as equally weakening 

 whencesoever it came. It would have been poor consolation to 

 have had as an epitaph 



" Here lies George Wilson, 

 Overtaken by Nemesis ; 

 He died, not of Haemoptysis, 

 But of Hoematemesis." 1 



While convalescent, but still feeble, there was handed to him 

 on his birthday, as it happened an official packet, contain- 

 ing his appointment as Director of the Scottish Industrial 

 Museum, then in contemplation. "A week before I got the 

 appointment," he tells Daniel, " I had no expectation of it. 

 The talk regarding it began nearly a year ago, but I told no 

 one, no promise having been made me." After mentioning the 

 kind efforts of friends in his favour, without solicitation on his 



i By mistaking his case is meant the supposition at first held, that the haemorrhage 

 proceeded from the lungs, for which haemoptysis is the technical name, while hiema- 

 temesis means bleeding from the stomach. 



