Page:Transactions of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (ser 03 vol 05).djvu/78

lxviii his religious opinions were probably more in accordance with those of that denomination than of any other. His early association—par nobile fratrum—with the late Rev. Dr. Wm. II. Muhlenberg, who thus began his long and useful life, may have given to them an inclination in that direction. His views and his manners were of course more or less tinctured by his birth and connections; and when in company with Friends he would sometimes adopt their mode of speech, hut never in his intercourse with others. He always dressed in black, was neat in his attire, and except that he wore an artificial chevelure as a substitute for what nature—generous enough in her other gifts—somewhat niggardly denied, had like other gentlemen little peculiarity about him.

The death of Dr. Bache in 1864, and that of Mrs. Wood a few years later, weighed heavily upon his spirits. They were losses that could not be repaired; and life ever after had a more subdued and joyless expression, particularly during its last few years of infirmity and disease. His work was done, the light of his dwelling had been extinguished, the day was declining upon him, and the shadows of the evening were closing around his lonely path. He had transcended the ordinary period of mortality, and there was nothing left for him on earth but faint repetition, amid suffering and sorrow, of former pleasures and occupations; while he was lured onward and upward by the joys of Heaven and the hope of reunion with those whom he had loved and lost. He told his friend the president of the College of Pharmacy, who called upon him while he was revising the last splendid edition of the Dispensatory, that he desired to live to complete it, and would then be ready for