John Macgregor ("rob Roy")

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVIII 1888--+892 BY THE STILL WATERS Few men could have borne the strain of so active and hard-working a life as Mac Gregor had led without succumbing to sickness. But in his case, until he was sixty-three years of age, he never had any illness, except in 1849 when he fell a victim to malarial fever contracted during his first tour in the East. On the contrary, his health was so uniformly robust and his spirits so buoyant that when he was verging on sixty an old friend said of him, "He never grows older, never relinquishes anything, and is as much a youth as a man." Nevertheless, he had occasional "warnings" and sometimes there seems to have been on his mind an apprehension of evil days in the future. The first really serious warning was within a few months of his retirement from the School Board: Feb. n, 1877, Sunday.--Soon after the sermon began I felt drowsy and went off into a slight faint and unconsciousness lasting only a few seconds, but with clutching of hands and nervous action. 188s THE GORDON MEMORIAL 429 Walked out of church with Col. Field. Burton came and prescribed rest.f My work last week particularly exhausting. A very short rest seemed all that was needed and as we have seen in the previous chapter he was soon in the full stream of new and old activities. We may supplement the narrative in that chapter by a few notes from his diary: 1885. April 12, Sunday.--Visited Arthur MacGregor, ill of rheumatic fever. I had to go in by train. The only other occasion of my using Sunday thus was when I came back from Holland very wet from the steamer at 4 A.m. Went to the Athenaeum for luncheon. Only about ten members there, not one in the smoking-room, and the billiard-room closed up. A very great difference this from some Sundays when I had...