The tenderness of William Nelson for the lower animals was shown in many ways. A companion of his boyhood recalls an incident of those early years. A party of boys at Kinghorn were off in a boat. They had obtained the prized loan of a gun, and each in his turn was to have a shot at the sea-gulls. William eagerly waited his chance; loaded and pointed his gun at a gull within shot; then, after a pause, he quietly laid it down, with the remark, “No, no! let the poor thing live!” One of the foremen at Hope Park furnishes an incident of later years. Walking down Preston Street, on his way to the office, Mr. Nelson saw a poor little sparrow, just fledged; and having with some difficulty caught it, he gave a boy sixpence to take it to Salisbury Green, and set it free among the trees. Another incident I glean from one of Mrs. Nelson’s letters. “One day, when we were walking together in the grounds, he stooped down and lifted up so tenderly a worm which was on the gravel walk, and laying it on the lawn, he said, ‘I cannot bear to see worms trampled upon; but this one will be safe here.’” This is a specific instance of what was a characteristic trait. In some manuscript “Recollections of the late William Nelson,” noted down by Mr. Dalgleish, the superintendent of the literary department of the publishing work for many years, the same familiar trait is thus referred to:--“The birds were his constant and most familiar friends. In the veranda of his beautiful house at Salisbury Green he had quaintly-fashioned rustic boxes hung up for the birds to build their nests in. It is a simple matter of fact that, not once or twice, but many times, when walking round his garden after a shower, he lifted a worm from the path, and laid it daintily on the grass.” The tenderness that spared the gull, and cared for the worm on his garden path, went even beyond this. He could not bear to see a mousetrap set, and nothing pleased him more than when his children gave evidence of a like sympathy. “None of us,” writes Mrs. Nelson, “will ever forget the delight he was in one morning when he learned from Alice that she, unknown to any one, had been cutting the string with which the spring of a trap set in the nursery was held, so that no mice might be caught. The servant, on her morning visits to the room, was mortified at the failure of her plans to entrap the intruders, and only after a good deal of questioning found out the delinquent.” Yet such are the curious inconsistencies of human nature, no such thoughts seem to have intruded to mar the enjoyment of his favourite pastime of fishing.