Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/95

 MEN AND THEIR PROFESSIONS

gloomy, and desponding hours, which nothing but a consecrated life can with- stand. We are therefore persuaded that he who enters here should pause and con- sider his way.

THE PHYSICIAN AND SURGEON.

The third useful profession — and we are not sure that it is not the first and most important to the human family — is that of the physician and surgeon. The more we contemplate this profession the more we honor it, and the longer we live the greater is our respect for ninety-nine in every hundred of the men that are in it. We have observed, and it cannot be that we are alone in our observation, that there is no class of men in this commu- nity that go about their business with the quiet demeanor that marks the true phy- sician. He meddles little in public mat- ters, and he seldom pauses to tell long stories. He is generally a model man, and there is an honor about him that no other profession possesses. He never re- marks unkindly of a rival, nor does he by word or conduct inform the mind of the rabble with explanation or insinua- tion of the delicate cases of disease or surgery which he has been called to treat. His lips are sealed; his tongue is silent, and we sometimes wonder whether or no he has been conducted into the deep re- cesses of some gloomy dungeon, and amidst suggestive surroundings and op- pressive silence, taken upon himself a more solemn obligation to secrecy and circumspection than any society on earth can boast.

The graduated physician and surgeon is a good and true man. To his skill, to his knowledge, to his honor, men and women implicitly commit themselves. Are we disposed to complain of his char- ges, a moment's reflection convinces us that an awful responsibility is his. Are we inclined to doubt his coming at our call, the second thought reveals the fact that in his faithfulness — we speak now of ninety-and-nine in a hundred — he out- ranks the world ; for, be it recorded to his praise, he responds to the wail of dis- tress whether it be in the heat of a high- twelve summer sun or the low-twelve of the cold, gloom and darkness of winter,

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and that, too, in innumerable cases where he knows there is to be no compensation. In him we confide when the days are dark, the nights long, the pain almost unendurable; when hope is but a faint ray, when dear ones are in danger, when distress is upon us. Let him who can cry out 'unfaithful!' The physician has little time of his own, and little time for speculations in which other men indulge. His average comfort — as other men see comfort — is in the main a myth. He is everybody's servant. He is in the man- sion at one hour and the cottage the next, and his profession knows no distinction — his teaching and practice no favoritism. Both obtain the best service he can ren- der, and it often occurs that the cottage obtains a discount in his charges.

We have observed that the world would be in a terribly bad way were it other- wise, and hence we take occasion to say that we have no sympathy with that mis- taken zeal — as it appears to our under- standing — which in any way tends to weaken the esteem in which all right- minded men and women must of neces- sity hold them. We have no desire, however, to discuss public measures in this article, and so we pause and pass to the consideration of other professions.

THE LAWYER.

The man who 'puts out his sign' in this profession must be an individual who has a well-balanced head, and is y thick skinned' in the matter of public abuse. There are a good many people, and they are usually those who are two-thirds of the time in a scrape, who cannot com- mand adjectives sufficiently expressive to speak his condemnation. He may be as honest, as conscientious and as pious as any man in the community, and yet there are those who consider and proclaim him a pirate. That he lives and thrives large- ly by other men's misfortunes and mis- understandings; that his fees for servi- ces rendered are generally five times what they ought to be, is true ; but that he is worse than the average of his fellow men is not true. We have observed, how- ever, that men who are never so happy as when they are ' head over heels ' in a law suit — and there are a good many such

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