… another dry day : very sharp N. to N.E. wind. Not a single message and only three people at night! Sic transit!1 Walked to a few cases + cycled down to Dunsdale. Got what I thought was a letter from Mary2 but it turned out to be a cheque from her to the London Hospital with a note to Lord [illegible]. She must have sent a letter for me to him. Got a Sunday Oregonian3 – a most American paper – from I suppose John or James Russell.4
1 Sic transit gloria mundi (Latin) or Thus passes the glory of the world.
2 Mary Jane Wallace née Muir (1836-1933), Dr Muir’s sister, widow of James Wallace (d.1922), and living at Scotstoune, Haslemere, Surrey.
3 The Sunday Oregonian (1881-), published at Portland, Oregon.
4 The Russells are so far unidentified but must have been local men who had emigrated.
[Source: Scottish Borders Archives & Local History Service SBA/657/26, Dr J S Muir of Selkirk, medical practitioner, journal for 1923]
Rumbling Clint's Scottish Notes 