Allan told me, that for some years past, feeling himself disengaged from
every personal tye, but not alienated from human sympathies, it had been
his taste, his _humour_ 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 often-times 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 bed-side 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 Vanity 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.