: the love or the confidence of his patients. The secret recesses of the heart are never opened to his view nor is it desirable, so far as regards his own comfort, that they should be. The confiding patient often hangs, as it were, on the conscientious physician with oppressive weight; if afflicted with a sympathizing soul and a light pocket, adieu to his happiness; his heart will bleed for distresses, both bodily and pecuniary, that he cannot alleviate, and he often gives up in despair a profession which, on this very account, will so severely tax the nervous system as to render the best medical talent comparatively useless. The young physician must fortunately begin practice with the children of poverty. Wealth and arrogance would season him to human woe but hopeless poverty and helpless disease, when borne with a woman's patience, often break the heart long before the poor body finds the repose of the grave! To witness this is the young physician's sad lot; what wonder then that his habits often become gloomy and morose, when he is forced into the festive scene? Instead of music and wine he is far more familiar with the cry of anguish and the wretched substitutes for food, hastily prepared by hands but ill-spared from the needle; the wan face of a dying mother or child is a sad contrast to the smile of love and beauty; and if his heart be that of a true man, he feels guilty when compelled to mingle with the giddy throng, and utter the vapid and foolish remarks that so badly harmonize with his feelings. In the earlier part of our professional life, we were so situated as to afford us ample opportunity of studying human character, and soon learned the full extent of our misfortune in possessing a frank and unsuspicious nature. A levity, too often careless of the patient's feelings, elicited a degree of freedom that would never have been used before a more austere character; an utter contempt for the pedantry of our profession, which, with the weak-minded, often deprived us of the respect necessary in the treatment of a tedious case, would nevertheless open the heart and mouth of the patient; and on more than one occasion, the gravity of a medical consultation was often utterly destroyed by a hearty peal of laughter, that did the patient more good than all the physic he had swallowed for weeks. In recalling from memory the scenes of our experience in drumming up practice, and by and by some of our student's life, we wish it distinctly understood, that they are literally true; in fact, often scarcely differing from the actual words that were used, or may have been supposed to be used by the patient; and never, we trust, whether for joy or sorrow, detailing an emotion to which some chord in unison with what is read, will not answer within the bosom of the reader. "Laugh and be merry," says the philosopher; "it purgeth away the black bile from the secret chambers of the liver, it quickeneth the secretions, and lighteth up the human countenance; it is, moreover, the most distinctive difference between man and a monkey." "Sorrow chasteneth the spirit and strengthens the bonds of human sympathy; the crystal drop, as it falleth from the windows of the soul, gives evidence of the purity of the inner chamber, and leaves a far more lasting impression of the goodness of the human heart, than all the prayers of the righteous." He gave to misery all he had-a tear. He gained from Heaven-'twas all he wished-a friend." Grey understood it. In our own sex, we have often thought tears a better evidence of manhood, than all the sternness and compression of the muscles that could ever be thrown into the countenance; and if laughter be the most distinctive active characteristic between man and the monkey, its converse, the agony of grief, is not less so, for it shows a far higher moral emotion, and one equally generic : it gives us, as we think, a reliable cudgel for Lord Monboddo and his foolish proselytes. Why is it that the soul refuses its profound sympathy with the uneducated and vulgar? Often have I felt guilty of seeming neglect of a common mother's grief for her dead child, when I was only wondering whether she felt as some other one would, under similar circumstances, or as I could have felt for her had she wept less; and yet there are scenes to which the grief of even the most refined and sincere for a child's death, are to myself as nothing: that gentle and trustful creature, who but yesterday laid the little being who but a short week before nestled closely to her bosom, and gladdened the young mother's heart with its sweet smile-in all the agony of her grief-when the last fond kiss was imprinted on its cold and waxen lips-never presented half so sad a picture to myself as the silent tearless look of anguish, when her eye first met my gaze on the discovery of her husband's dreadful failing of drunkenness. 'Twas my first and painful scene; twenty-five years have closed the grave over the sweet suffering child of sorrow, and him who swore to love and cherish her; and now 'tis no matter how her heart was wrung. We will relate it just as it occurred; it may benefit some erring creature, and save another heart from breaking. Mr. and his young wife took up their abode in apartments near my first residence. I owed my acquaintance to an introduction at a course of lectures, in which I was associated for the benefit of one of our dispensaries. Anatomy and physiology of the viscera were my subjects, and I observed from his excessive paleness, that he was afflicted with some internal congestion, or that his circulation at any rate was not of a high order. A great degree of curiosity on the subject of enlargement of the liver from the excessive use of brandy, with a desire to know the earliest indications rendering abstinence indispensable to preserve life, gave me a hint of the reason of his listlessness, and the cause of his inattention to business. He was a lawyer, and had a few years before been actively occupied in the lower courts. Going home one night at a late hour from one of my midnight visits, I observed him staggering before me in such a manner that I feared my aid would be necessary. He was excessively proud and tenacious of his character, and I therefore avoided his observation, walking slowly behind him until a violent fall compelled me to interfere, and raise him; being obliged, indeed, almost to carry him to his house, a small and barely-decent residence, to which hist habits had reduced him, and the rent for which, as I subsequently learned, his delicate wife paid by painting maps and prints for the booksellers. My first impulse was to leave him as soon as I should hear the approach of the servant in answer to my summons. I did not anticipate the possibility of the absence of the single servant I knew they had some time kept; but their poverty had obliged them to discharge her, and the bell was almost instantly answered by the gentle being who knew, poor child, the nature of the summons. She was in her day-dress, and had not removed it, as she told me, for several nights; having been obliged to watch the return of him who should have been her hope and her ark of refuge, and whose strong arm should have interposed between her and all harm. Alas! drunkenness had dimmed the lustre of that eye that once looked so kindly on her, and withered the arm that should have protected her, and naught remained for both but the quiet grave. We none of us imagined how near it was. Never shall I forget the look of heart-broken anguish with which her gaze met mine, as the flame of the hall light fell upon us. Those tears are imprinted on my very soul; nor do I think any man, with a spark of humanity in him, would not have answered them in kind. I carried him to his chamber, and after examining and dressing the wound on his forehead received from his fall, and knowing that my absence would be most accep table to the true wife, I took my departure, begging her instantly to send for me in the event of any trouble or new misfortune. I did not repeat my visit, well knowing what her sufferings must have been, and that she wished to bear them unnoticed and alone. "Twas some days before I again saw them; and I fondly hoped, from a short appearance of renewed attention to business, and seeing his wife occasionally walking arm-inarm with him, plainly but respectably clad, that he had turned over a new leaf in the blackened and defaced volume of his life. But, alas! he soon relapsed into a lower state than ever; and often staggered by my office, occasionally looking in, and uttering some maudlin nonsense. I was powerless; he was like many others addicted to the loathsome vice, and had not mind enough to appeal to. He resented the least hint for reform; and once gave me to understand I would do well to concentrate all my mental powers on my own business, assuring me (and God knows I felt the truth of the remark) I would find no superfluous ability. The poor fellow never forgave me for carrying him up stairs, though his suffering wife avoided mentioning my name to him unless in a medical light. A few months after the incident which brought me into this family, the cholera of '32 came on. It was soon apparent that the disease confined its most fatal ravages to the wretched and debilitated. None will forget the sickening and heart-rending scenes of that awful visitation. The Angel of Death did, indeed, spread his wing on the blast; but he did not always fan away the demon of pain from the couch of poverty, as I have often remarked. True, the flight of the spirit was often fearfully speedy and painless in the wretched and intemperate, but the strong man struggled fearfully against the terrible and unknown enemy, and the nerves of the dying frame were racked. and let loose |