Allan told me that for some years past, feeling himself disengaged
from every personal tie, but not alienated from human sympathies, it
had been his taste, his _humor_ he called it, to spend a great
portion of his time in _hospitals_ and _lazar-houses_.
He had found a _wayward pleasure_, he refused to name it a virtue, in
tending a description of people, who had long ceased to expect
kindness or friendliness from mankind, but were content to accept the
reluctant services, which the oftentimes unfeeling instruments and
servants of these well-meant institutions deal out to the poor sick
people under their care.
It is not medicine, it is not broths and coarse meats, served up at a
stated hour with all the hard formalities of a prison--it is not the
scanty dole of a bed to die on--which dying man requires from his
species.
Looks, attentions, consolations,--in a word, _sympathies_, are what a
man most needs in this awful close of mortal sufferings. A kind look,
a smile, a drop of cold water to the parched lip--for these things a
man shall bless you in death.
And these better things than cordials did Allan love to
administer--to stay by a bedside the whole day, when something
disgusting in a patient's distemper has kept the very nurses at a
distance--to sit by, while the poor wretch got a little sleep--and be
there to smile upon him when he awoke--to slip a guinea, now and
then, into the hands of a nurse or attendant--these things have been
to Allan as _privileges_, for which he was content to live; choice
marks, and circumstances, of his Maker's goodness to him.
And I do not know whether occupations of this kind be not a spring of
purer and nobler delight (certainly instances of a more disinterested
virtue) than arises from what are called Friendships of Sentiment.
Between two persons of liberal education, like opinions, and common
feelings, oftentimes subsists a Variety of Sentiment, which disposes
each to look upon the other as the only being in the universe worthy
of friendship, or capable of understanding it,--themselves they
consider as the solitary receptacles of all that is delicate in
feeling, or stable in attachment: when the odds are, that under every
green hill, and in every crowded street, people of equal worth are to
be found, who do more good in their generation, and make less noise
in the doing of it.
It was in consequence of these benevolent propensities, I have been
describing, that Allan oftentimes discovered considerable
inclinations in favor of my way of life, which I have before
mentioned as being that of a surgeon. He would frequently attend me
on my visits to patients; and I began to think that he had serious
intentions of making my profession his study.
He was present with me at a scene--a, _death-bed scene_--I shudder
when I do but think of it.
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