4G2 MEMOIR OF GEORGE WILSON. CHAP. XI. 



" BRIDGE OF ALLAN, December 29, 1858. 



" MY DEAR MOTHER, ' How did Tubal-Cain first. learn to 

 work iron ? ' I was about to have that momentous question 

 answered when the train reached this, and had to hurry out 

 without receiving a reply. The chance of having the problem 

 stated above made clear, is not likely to occur again. I may, I 

 think, make up my mind that I won't, however long I live, find 

 any one in a condition to tell me how Smith the first learned to 

 hammer iron. Yet my neighbour in the railway carriage, 

 whom Uncle could not fail to recognise as having something 

 antediluvian about him, seemed to know all about the matter. 

 We had been talking about iron-manufacture, when suddenly 

 referring to a supposed improvement which a very ignorant 

 person had, as he imagined, ' introduced' into iron-making, not 

 aware that the practice was immemorially ancient, my fellow- 

 traveller said to me, ' Why, Tubal-Cain found that out the 

 second day! 



" Well, thought I to myself, if you know what T. C. did the 

 second day, perhaps you can tell me what he did the first, and 

 so I put the question which begins this note. I lost the answer, 

 but I don't think, though I had gone on to Aberdeen with my 

 good friend, I would have got more than an oracular response. 

 He could answer other questions, however, and is largely to 

 help the museum, for which I begged all the way. 



" We are in quiet comfortable lodgings. I am steadily pro- 

 gressing with my lectures. To-day is magnificently bright, and 

 we shall presently visit Dunblane. 



" Your loving son GEORGE." 



On the first Sabbath of 1859, he tells Dr. Gladstone : 



" I found your kind and welcome letter awaiting me here on 

 my return from Bridge of Allan, where Jessie and I had four 

 very quiet and pleasant days. I have not felt up to the mark 

 at all this winter. . . . My worst complaint is a readily-recurring 

 hsemorrhage from the lungs, which, though passive rather than 

 active, none the less steals the life-blood away, and is the cause, 

 I suppose, of the sense of weariness, good- for- nothingness, 

 slough-of-despondness, as May, I imagine, would call it, which 



