you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a term? Get into the boat this instant, you lazy, loitering rogue.’
“But though Mr. Hume always talked of his approaching dissolution with great cheerfulness, he never affected to make any parade of his magnanimity. He never mentioned the subject but when the conversation naturally led to it, and never dwelt longer upon it than the course of the conversation happened to require; it was a subject, indeed, which occurred pretty frequently, in consequence of the inquiries which his friends who came to see him naturally made concerning the state of his health. The conversation which I mentioned above, and which passed on Thursday the 8th of August, was the last except one that I ever had with him. He had now become so very weak that the company of his most intimate friends fatigued him; for his cheerfulness was still so great, his complaisance and social disposition were still so entire, that when any friend was with him he could not help talking more, and with greater exertion than suited the weakness of his body. At his own desire, therefore, I agreed to leave Edinburgh, where I was staying partly upon his account, and returned to my mother’s house here, at Kirkcaldy, upon condition that he would send for me whenever he wished to see me; the physician who saw him most frequently, Dr. Black, undertaking in the meantime to write me occasionally an account of the state of his health.
“On the 22nd of August the doctor wrote me the following letter:—
“‘Since my last Mr. Hume has passed his time pretty easily, but is much weaker. He sits up, goes downstairs once a day, and amuses himself with reading, but seldom sees anybody. He finds that even the conversation of his most intimate friends fatigues and oppresses him; and it is happy that he does not need it, for he is quite free from anxiety, impatience, or low spirits, and passes his time very well with the assistance of amusing books.’ {p-xxvi}