"Well, there's another nail put into my
coffin," was the remark made on throwing off his top-coat on
returning home; and a sleepless night almost invariably followed.
At twenty-seven, Wilson was lecturing ten, eleven, or more hours
weekly, usually with setons or open blister-wounds upon him--his
"bosom friends," he used to call them. He felt the shadow of
death upon him; and he worked as if his days were numbered.
"Don't be surprised," he wrote to a friend, "if any morning at
breakfast you hear that I am gone." But while he said so, he did
not in the least degree indulge in the feeling of sickly
sentimentality. He worked on as cheerfully and hopefully as if in
the very fulness of his strength. "To none," said he, "is life so
sweet as to those who have lost all fear to die."
Sometimes he was compelled to desist from his labours by sheer
debility, occasioned by loss of blood from the lungs; but after a
few weeks' rest and change of air, he would return to his work,
saying, "The water is rising in the well again!" Though disease
had fastened on his lungs, and was spreading there, and though
suffering from a distressing cough, he went on lecturing as usual.
To add to his troubles, when one day endeavouring to recover
himself from a stumble occasioned by his lameness, he overstrained
his arm, and broke the bone near the shoulder. But he recovered
from his successive accidents and illnesses in the most
extraordinary way.
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