occurrence to seem to him worthy of note. The poor and needy had learned to regard him as their unfailing resort; and if his charity was abused, he would say in reply to prudent remonstrants that it was better a few impostors should succeed, than one genuine claim be rejected. The traders on his benevolence were wont, as already noted, to watch for him on his way to Parkside; and Mr. Gray notes of such claimants: “Mr. Nelson would sometimes say to me, ‘The printing trade must be in a dreadful state,’ for in his walk thither he had been met by half-a-dozen printers pleading for help. He inquired at times into the state of the trade, with the view, I suppose, to guide him in his charities; for it offended his guileless trustfulness in others to find he had been imposed upon, though it never led to any stint in his liberality.” Another who had been many years in his service writes: “He had an almost child-like confidence in some folks; but if his suspicions were once aroused as to anything wrong, he ferreted out the matter to the bottom, and in case of any betrayal of trust, he would speak of it with a keen sense of wrong. But if you responded with any denunciation of the offender, his manner changed, and he generally found some apology or some reason for pitying the delinquent. Nor did the fact that a claimant had wronged him affect his consideration of the case if it proved to be a necessitous one, especially if he had a wife and children.” When an action was raised by the contracting engineer who undertook the repairs of the machinery, against the widow of his predecessor, to enforce the completion of some work for which her late husband had been responsible, William Nelson opposed it, declaring that no good ever came of prosecuting a widow, and he ultimately repaid £130 of law expenses incurred in the suit.