ys lately, and of course seduced me into all sorts of wild
habits. He is looking well, in good condition, but not so fat as he
was two years ago." At that time I had been living very frequently
on little more than one hard egg per day. Milk and coffee in the
morning, and half a pound of meat twice a week. In another letter
to his mother, shortly after the above date, he says: "I have not
heard from my father for the last fortnight. I am in very good
lodgings, at a boarding-house, not working hard, and have time to
cultivate some agreeable society. The landlady is all that can be
desired and more than could be expected--the company far above the
average. There is Mr. B., a barrister and Cambridge man, first
rate; and a nice old lady, Mrs. F., very intelligent and
good-natured. We three are great friends. Taking it altogether, the
house is so comfortable, that I did not go to the theatre once last
month." The mutual good opinion may be estimated by the following
introduction from the gentleman alluded to above, to the Colonial
Secretary at Perth, in the event of his explorations leading my son
to Western Australia:

"I pray your hospitality for Mr. W. J. Wills, for whom I have a
very high esteem and friendship. He makes me happy beyond flattery
by permitting me to think that I add something to his life. You
cannot fail to like him. He is a thorough Englishman, self-relying
and self-contained; a well-bred gentleman without a jot of
effeminacy. Plucky as a mastiff, high-blooded as a racer,
enterprising but reflective, cool, keen, and as composed as daring.
Few men talk less; few by manner and conduct suggest more. One
fault you will pardon, a tendency to overrate the writer of this
letter."

This gentleman, Mr. Birnie, is a son of the late Sir Richard
Birnie, so long an eminent police magistrate in London. At the
close of a lecture which he gave at Ballaarat on the 24th of May,
1862, subsequent to the disastrous intelligence of my son's death,
he introduced the following remarks, as reported in a colonial
paper:--

If amusement and gravity might be held compatible, they would
bear with him in pronouncing the name of William John Wills.
(Cheers.) The lecturer, when first in Melbourne, lived at a
boarding-house, and there he met Wills. Their friendship soon grew
and strengthened, in spite of the difference of their ages. Of the
man as a public explorer, everybody knew as well as he did.
Professor Neumayer said that Will