A shilling, in those days, was considered no mean sum per day.
"Alas for the rarity
Of Christian charity
Under the sun!
O, it was pitiful!
Near a whole city full,
Home she had none.
"Sisterly, brotherly,
Fatherly, motherly
Feelings had changed;
Love, by harsh evidence,
Thrown from its eminence,
Even God's providence
Seeming estranged."
"Alas, doctor," said an unfortunate old gentleman, some seventy-four years
old,--a merchant ruined by the American war, bowed down by the weight of
his misfortunes, and by disease,--to Dr. Lettsom, "those beautiful trees
you may see out of my bedroom window I planted with these now feeble
hands. I have lived to see them bear fruit; they have become as part of my
family. But with my children still dearer to me, I must quit this dear old
home, which was the delight of my youth and the hope of my declining
years, and become a homeless, joyless wanderer in my old age."
The benevolent Quaker doctor was deeply affected by these words, and the
utter despair and hopelessness with which the weeping old man uttered
them; and, speaking a few words of consolation to his unfortunate patient,
he wrote a prescription, and hastily retired.
On the old gentleman's examination of the remarkable looking recipe, he
found it to be a check for a large sum of money. The benevolence of the
physician did not end here. He purchased the residence and grounds of the
old man's creditors, and prescribed them to him for life. (He is our young
Quaker antipode, mentioned in another chapter.)
The old apothecary, Sutcliff, was right when he said of young Lettsom,
while his apprentice, "Thou may'st make a good physician, but I think not
a good apothecary." An apothecary is not expected to give away his time or
medicine. (They seldom disappoint one's expectations.) A grocer is not
expected to give away flour, rice, sugar, tea, to even a starving,
languishing neighbor; nor the baker, nor the butcher, to give bread or
meat to the perishing. Why, such demands upon them daily would be laughed
to scorn. But the physician! These very same niggardly men (individually)
would berate the doctor, be he ever so needy, or be his family ever so
large, who would accept a fee for even cold-night services to any but the
richest patients. All physicians do not have access to the "richest
patients." Many a good physician has been compelled to quit practice
because of his too large "bump" of benevolence, and because of the limited
amount of that article in his first few patients, while thousands of
practitioners in this country struggle and labor on through a life of
self-denial, wearing themselves out, dying prematurely, leaving their
families penniless to the cold charities of an uncharitable world. (See
Chapter XXX.)