460 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. XI. 



that I might require to borrow the deceased Peggy Brown's 

 lapidary inscription, with the due change of gender : 



1 She had two bad legs and a baddish cough, 

 But the legs it was that carried her off.' 



The legs got better, but by way of mending the cough, I contrived, 

 forgetting as I always do that I am a damaged locomotive, to fall 

 upon the corner of a thick board, and hit my side such a thump 

 that I thought I had broken a rib. However, it was not frac- 

 tured, though it has ached and bothered me sufficiently to stop 

 all extra work, including hospitalities and letters. The said 

 cornered board had on it one of the plans for the New Industrial 

 Museum, about which I was much concerned. 



" Students abound this winter, especially juniors. I think 

 myself well off with thirty-five. My class is a very pleasant 

 one. An Indian general, an artillery lieutenant, who lost a bit 

 of his skull (but certainly none of his brains) at Lucknow, an 

 engineer officer, four Indian surgeons, a navy surgeon, a W.S., 

 several young ministers, and a wind up of farmers, tanners, &c. 

 They are a pleasant lot to lecture to, and I have re-arranged my 

 laboratory for them, where we meet comfortably. Only a little 

 better health and but why complain ? 



" Forgive the valetudinarian haziness of this. We are well." 



The tendency to erysipelas, of which this letter speaks, con- 

 tinued more or less from that time onwards, and compelled him 

 to even more seclusion than hitherto. Previously it had been 

 his custom to write or read for some hours almost every evening 

 to the sound of the pianoforte, or, as he called it, his " private 

 band." Favourite songs, and morsels of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, 

 or Handel, were encored ad infinitum, with an occasional Nigger 

 melody or simple air. A whistling accompaniment betokened 

 the special favourites, work of the lighter kind going on all the 

 while. His love for music has already been spoken of. "Music ! 

 music ! Some time or other, if not in this world, at least in the 

 next, I will drink my full of it." After hearing Jenny Lind 



