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“Health to the art whose glory is to give
The crowning boon that makes it life to live.”
Holmes.
Start not, my fastidious reader, when I announce that the young gentleman, in whose favor and fortunes I would enlist your friendly sympathies, as the hero of this sketch, is, or rather was, a medical student. Now I am very well aware that medical students are proverbially “hard cases”—wild, spreeing, careless, skeptically inclined young gentlemen, whose handkerchiefs smell of ether, and whose gloves are strongly suggestive of rhubarb; whose talk runs large, with bold jests on grave subjects, sly anatomical allusions, and startling hints at something
“Mair horrible and awfu’,
Which e’en to name wad be unlawfu’,”
and whose very laughter has a sort of bony-rattle about it.
But our friend, Will Ashley, fortunately belonged not to the Bob Sawyer and Ben Allen class of Esculapian disciples. He was a man of refinement, intellect, education, and principle—pleasing address, fine person, and good family. Republican as I am, I can but think much of good blood—pure and honorable blood, I mean. He had no bravado, no pretension, no recklessness, no skepticism about him. He chose his profession at the first, from a real, natural leaning that way, and pursued it with true enthusiasm and untiring constancy; and this partiality and devotion have been rewarded with the happiest success. Dr. Ashley is now regarded by his many patients, with a remarkable confidence and affection. To them, there seems “healing in the very creak of his shoes on the stairs,” his cheerful smile lights up the sick room like sunshine; his gentle words and sympathetic tones are as balm and “freshening oil” to hearts and minds, wounded and distempered with the body, and his bright laugh and playful wit are a positive tonic to the weak and nervous and fearful. But I am anticipating; my story has perhaps most to do with the student-life of Ashley.
When William was quite young—a mere boy indeed, he became much attached to a pretty cousin of his own—a gentle, dark-eyed, Southern girl, who made her home for some years with his mother and sister, in the quiet, New England city of H——, where she was attending school.