Robert Wilson

“ The lover relished not the appearance, and still less the cries, of the lusty farmer; and as little apparently did his companion—who, as the horse increased his speed, grasped her abductor round the waist—wish to fall into the hands of the enraged pursuer. Away they scoured, and, "Fear not, Mary—love will distance the old churl," fell from the lips of the panting lover, in reply to the inspiring pressure of her arms; while, "Na, na, Robert, flee for the love o' heaven," added more energy to the spur, and more passion to his breast. They reached the skirts of the woody Langholm ”

“ She turned, and then coming back towards me, seated herself upon one of the rough chairs near the table.
"I will hear thy tale," she said, a smile upon her lips. "But list to me, sir, the moment that thou dost digress from that I am gone, and thou mayst depend upon it.
"And what is this marvelous tale of thine?" she continued gently, her azure eyes upon my face. "Sir Robert, [Pg 179] who was out of town, only returned this evening, and I immediately sent for him, and told him that thou wast here, condemned to die. ”

“ The first man of distinguished ability in practice, and the first educated physician to settle in Portland and grow up with the city, and help build it was Robert Bruce Wilson, who was born in Portsmouth, Virginia, June 12, 1828, and received his collegiate and medical education at the University of Virginia. ”

“ Wilson resumed his ordnance survey work in Ireland on 1 July 1885. In November 1886 he was appointed director-general of the ordnance survey in the United Kingdom, and until 1893 was on that service at Southampton. He was president of the geographical section of the British Association at Bath in 1888. The survey was transferred from the office of works to the board of agriculture in 1890, and in 1891 Wilson received the silver medal from the Society of Arts after an address on the survey's methods and needs. ”

“ Wilson said he was white with passion as he followed you, and that she in fear trembled so she could scarcely open the door. He was a little ashamed afterwards, and apologized in a manner for what sufficiently required an apology. Before a servant too!—But that is long ago—and at that time he knew nothing for a certainty. Is it possible to be continuously angry with any one who proves himself so much the weaker? The slave of himself ... of his own passions—is too unhappy for the rod of another—man or woman. ”

“ But nobody heard yesterday of either your visit or of Flush’s misdoings ... so Wilson was discreet, I suppose, as she usually is, by the instinct of her vocation. Of all the persons who are not in our confidence, she has the most certain knowledge of the truth. Dearest, we shall be able to have Saturday. ”

“ Twenty-seven brawny watermen rowed the Queen’s Barge from Westminster Stairs to the City, and, strange to say, for once the fog and murky atmosphere of London in early winter cleared away, and the ceremony took place in the sunshine, under a sky of Italian brilliancy. The crowds covered every possible corner where human beings could cluster. The long lines of shipping on each bank of the Pool were bright with bunting, and black with swarming sightseers. ”

“ ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO.
“The Alvarado,” on the Santa Fe,
Here oft my eyes have met the break of day;
The red sun rising through the morning mist,
Over the mountains, and the mesa kissed,
Down to the valley, where the shadows deep
Dissolved, and woke the city from its sleep.
Facing the East, the first faint streak of dawn
Sought my closed eyes and ope’d them to the morn.
Then like the passing shadow of a cloud
Revealed the world beneath the lifted shroud,
The glories of the proud Sandia Range,
Whose rugged grandeur God alone can change. ”

“ While he walk’d with his God in a garden of flow’rs ;
No sorrow he knew, till he stretch’d forth his hand,
And took of the fruit ’gainst his Maker’s command.
Then paradise wither’d—the earth ceas’d to bloom,
For sin scatter’d o’er it death’s horrible gloom!
Man, happy no longer, now destin’d to toil,
With the sweat of his brow he must water the soil;—
The prey of disease, disappointment, and pain,
Quick down to the dust he must wander again;
And his soul, never dying, cast off from its God,
In the regions of woe must take up its abode. ”

“ But I think the true principle is, that the marriage ought only to be dissolved when it is impossible for the injured party to condone, and that Divine Providence has constituted an essential difference in this respect between the adultery of the husband and the adultery of the wife. I would rather run the risk of cases of great hardship occurring, when it would seem desirable that women should be released from the tyranny of profligate and brutal husbands, than give too great a facility to divorce, which has a tendency most demoralising. ”

“ Amidst his severest adversities he frequently sent remittances to his mother, in Scotland, his father having died and left her poor. To the day of her death he manifested an earnest and commendable solicitude for her comfort, and used every means within his power to alleviate her wants and smooth her downward path to the tomb.
With the commencement of British oppression the political career of Mr. Wilson began. He freely spoke and ably wrote in favour of equal rights and liberal principles. He was an early, zealous, and able advocate of the American cause. ”

“ Wilson’s parents were religious people, and held a prominent position in the church. His mother died at an early age from the excessive hardships she had to endure in the vicinity of Montreal, as a pioneer settler. His father, as a youth, received no training as an artisan, yet having a natural talent for using tools, he adopted the trade of carpenter, and in a very few years thereafter became an expert mechanic. He designed and made the first railway snow-plough used in Canada, and from his model the plough now used is still made. ”

“ A livelier party never surrounded a breakfast table, from the mother to the youngest of Mrs. Wilson’s children, the light-hearted Charles, a sprightly, intelligent boy of thirteen. Her eldest, a son, a member of the University, had returned to his home to spend the winter vacation. Herbert Wilson was a noble specimen of the youth of New England, active and enterprising, uniting to a fine constitution, habits of industry and order, and already ranking high among the talented sons of his native State. Elizabeth, the daughter, was the counterpart, in disposition, of her cousin Mary ”

“ There is a modesty in his character that keeps him back. He is about 36 years old.
Mr. Wilson ranks among the foremost in legal and political knowledge. He has joined to a fine genius all that can set him off and show him to advantage. He is well acquainted with Man, and understands all the passions that influence him. Government seems to have been his peculiar Study, all the political institutions of the World he knows in detail, and can trace the causes and effects of every revolution from the earliest stages of the Greecian commonwealth down to the present time. ”

“ Although wholly absorbed in his public duties while in Washington, when he is at his home in Charlestown, West Virginia, he is a merry, rollicking boy among his four sons, provided they are at home with him. He is the happy father also of two daughters, and the family is an ideal one. Both he and his accomplished wife are Baptists, and when the new of his nomination to Congress reached him, they were at a prayer meeting. It was a case of the office seeking the man, and Professor Wilson has never in any sense of the word been a wire-puller. ”

“ Wilson left Oxford in 1807, after passing a highly creditable examination for his degree. His disappointed affections had so weighed upon him, that he had a nervous apprehension of being plucked,—which, however, turned out to be quite unnecessary. He was now twenty-two years of age, a man singularly favored both by Nature and by fortune,—possessed of almost everything which might seem to insure the fullest measure of health, happiness, success, and fame. Rarely, indeed, do the gods give so freely of their good gifts to a single mortal. ”

“ In business he is active, pushing, hard-working, and far-seeing in his plans, and never puts off until to-morrow what can be done to-day. With his employees he is a favourite, and is looked upon by them as most generous and kind. Mr. Wilson has adopted as his motto, “It pays to think.” In politics he is a Liberal-Conservative, and in religion an adherent of the Presbyterian form of worship. On the 6th of November, 1865, he married Jeanie, third daughter of the late William Kilgour, of Beauharnois, province of Quebec, and has a family of five children—three sons and two daughters. ”

“ George Wilson made his living by freighting—that is, carrying goods from place to place by waggons, as there was no rail by which to send things. Sometimes, when he took extra long journeys, he would have to leave his wife and boy for some weeks to keep each other company.
'Take care of your mother, Jack, my boy,' he would say, before starting. 'She has no man to look after her or do things for her but ye till I get home.' And right well did the little fellow obey orders. He was a most helpful boy for his age, and was devoted to his mother, who was far from strong. ”

“ No other American has made so much world history as Woodrow Wilson, who retires at noon today from the office of President of the United States. No other American has ever bulked so large in the affairs of civilization or wielded so commanding an influence in shaping their ends.
The great outstanding figure of the war, Mr. Wilson remains the great outstanding figure of the peace. Broken in health and shattered in body, Mr. Wilson is leaving the White House, but his spirit still dominates the scene. It pervades every chancellery in Europe. It hovers over every capital. ”

“ We have left ourselves no space to speak of Dr. Wilson as an author, as an academic and popular lecturer, as a member of learned societies, as a man of exquisite literary powers and fancy, and as a citizen of remarkable public acceptation. This must come from some more careful, and fuller, and more leisurely record of his genius and worth. What he was as a friend it is not for us to say; we only know that when we leave this world we would desire no better memorial than to be remembered by many as George Wilson now is, and always will be. ”

“ L. E. Robinson
“This volume is by an Englishman who says: ‘I cannot pretend to be entirely free from a certain pro-American bias, though I hope I have not allowed it to color what I have written.’ And it is true that the author is not so pro-American that he is blind to some of the blunders of his hero. American readers will find the book exceedingly interesting.”
“What may appeal to most Americans as a fundamental error is his assumption that Mr Wilson is primarily an initiating leader. ... To interpret the public will seems to be his chosen ideal for a leader of democracy. ”

“ The money was instantly paid down from a purse pretty will filled; for William Wilson was the son of a wealthy and much respected sheep-farmer in the neighbourhood, and had had his name once called in the kirk, along with that of "Janet Harkness of Burnfoot, both in this parish."
"Hoot noo, bairns," rejoined the mother; "ye're baith wrang—that Bible winna do ava. Ye maun hae a big ha' Bible to take the buik wi', and worship the God o' yer fathers nicht and morning, as they hae dune afore ye; and Watty will bring ye ane frae Glasgow the next time he comes roun' ”

“ Such an outlook, but from a lower altitude, delighted daily the eyes of Nature-loving Wilson, whose very prose was poetry, of a calibre not less than Kingsley's in his celebrated 'Devonshire Idylls,' or than Ruskin's rhapsodies on Switzerland. His ardent temperament and unusual virility compelled him to throw himself heartily into almost every possible form of physical and intellectual enjoyment. There never was such a man as he for undertaking everything and anything, and for doing nothing badly, including the art of 'loafing,' when he was in the cue for it. ”

“ At the age of sixteen Wilson was apprenticed to a hat manufacturer at Hawick, but he still pursued far into the night the practice of reading and study. After a short time his father purchased the business for him and an elder brother named William. The two young men prospered in their undertaking, and their native town proved too small for their energies. In 1824 they removed to London, and commenced business with a partner, the firm being known as Wilson, Irwin, & Wilson. ”

“ But a blow was impending upon Wilson himself which must have destroyed his power of continuing a work the first requisite of which was exuberant animal spirits. In 1837 he lost his wife, and was never the same man again. For nearly twenty years he had been enriching ‘Blackwood,’ wholly apart from the ‘Noctes,’ with a torrent of contributions—critical, descriptive, political—so representative of the general spirit of the periodical as fully to warrant the erroneous inference that he was its conductor. ”

“ Some people said that he was supplied by the Jews, others that he had discovered the philosopher's stone, while certain good-natured folk averred that he had robbed the Holland mail of a quantity of jewellery, an exploit for which another man had suffered death.
On 9 April 1694 Wilson and his friend, Captain Wightman, were in the Fountain Inn in the Strand when John Law, afterwards the celebrated financier, came in and fixed a quarrel upon Wilson. They proceeded to Bloomsbury Square, where after one pass the Beau fell wounded in the stomach, and died without speaking a single word. ”