Page:Memoir of Isaac Parrish, M.D. - Samuel Jackson.djvu/11

 of this promotion to the cholera hospital, I do not find that he had any accidental or extraneous advantages. His father was too delicate and conscientious to obtrude his son, and hence he seldom recommended him without mentioning others at the same time, that patients might feel themselves free to choose. The son, however, had shining virtues that could not lie hid; they were continually breaking forth in acts of benevolence that quickly brought him into favorable notice: hence he was elected in 1834 one of the Surgeons of Wills Hospital, to which he was ardently devoted during the rest of his life, a space of eighteen years.

This same year, 1834, he was married to Sarah Redwood Longstreth, daughter of Samuel Longstreth, a respectable merchant of Philadelphia. In this alliance, his older brother writes me, "he found a most congenial companion, who shared with him the toils and anxieties of life during a happy union of eighteen years."

We must now view him a young physician in his twenty-fourth year, a candidate for public favor in a great city, with many hopes entertained by his friends, and many critical and some jealous eyes now turned upon him, as the representative of his eminent father. But skill in medicine and public confidence are not heirlooms in a family, and therefore the young man must labor among the poor, and meet with many sore repulses from the rich, even from some of those on whom his hopes had chiefly rested. His remedies are patience with infinite forbearance, the imperative bear and forbear of the Grecian philosopher. These are not only successful, but the necessary use of them in early life, serves to perfect the character of the rising physician; for there is no future period of his life in which these virtues are not pre-eminently useful. It is not often true in America, as Dr. Johnson said in London, that "a physician in a great city is the mere football of fortune." In our happier state of society, patient merit will generally command fortune and despise the doctrine of chances.

Dr. P. entered on practice when this city was replete with physicians of eminent merit and practical talents, who were great obstructions of course in his long, steep, and slippery ascent to the temple of fame; from our knowledge of his character, however, we cannot but fancy him as modest and unobtrusive, patient and hopeful, looking with cheering confidence to the time when diligent merit would find its reward. Nor was he disappointed, for every year