the faculty should
be more moderate in their fees, or take more pains to deserve them; for,
generally, they only come into a room, feel the sick man's pulse, ask the
nurse a few questions, inspect the patient's tongue, and, perhaps, his
water; then sit down, look plaguy wise, and write. The golden fee finds
the ready hand, and they hurry away, as if the sick man's room were
infectious. So to the next they troll, and to the next, if men of great
practice; valuing themselves upon the number of visits they make in a
morning, and the little time they make them in. They go to dinner and
unload their pockets; and sally out again to refill them. And thus, in a
little time, they raise vast estates; for, as Ratcliffe said, when first
told of a great loss which befell him, It was only going up and down one
hundred pairs of stairs to fetch it up.

Mrs. Sambre (Belton's sister) had several times proposed to him a
minister to pray by him, but the poor man could not, he said, bear the
thoughts of one; for that he should certainly die in an hour or two
after; and he was willing to hope still, against all probability, that he
might recover; and was often asking his sister if she had not seen people
as bad as he was, who, almost to a miracle, when every body gave them
over, had got up again?

She, shaking her head, told him she had; but, once saying, that their
disorders were of an acute kind, and such as had a crisis in them, he
called her Small-hopes, and Job's comforter; and bid her say nothing, if
she could not say more to the purpose, and what was fitter for a sick man
to hear. And yet, poor fellow, he has no hopes himself, as is plain by
his desponding terrors; one of which he fell into, and a very dreadful
one, soon after the doctor went.

***

WEDNESDAY, NINE O'CLOCK AT NIGHT.

The poor man had been in convulsions, terrible convulsions! for an hour
past. O Lord! Lovelace, death is a shocking thing! by my faith it is!--
I wish thou wert present on this occasion. It is not merely the concern
a man has for his friend; but, as death is the common lot, we see, in his
agonies, how it will be one day with ourselves. I am all over as if cold
water were poured down my back, or as if I had a strong ague-fit upon me.
I was obliged to come away. And I write, hardly knowing what.--I wish
thou wert here.

***

Though I left him, because I could stay no longer, I can't be easy by
myself, but must go to him again.