Sustaining then, as the physician does, so intimate a relationship to his patients, and sympathizing so deeply, as they feel that he does, with them in their trials, and sufferings, and joys, his opportunities for influencing those around him for good or for ill must be greater than fall to the lot of most of those who occupy commanding stations in society. He cannot avoid exerting a wide and an effectual influence. It can be said emphatically of him, that every act which he does, every word that he drops, is seed which will surely produce fruit, and it is seed which he sows with a broad cast. The advice which he gives, the opinions which he expresses, and the example which he sets, have a double force from the fact, that the intimacy and sympathy which exist between him and his patients unlock the heart, and his influence finds no repulse in entering there. Every man has more influence in his own little community at home by his own fireside, than he has abroad in the great community around him. Familiarity, mutual confidence, and sympathy, are the obvious causes of this. But the physician may in a measure, as you have seen, be said to be at home everywhere, by everybody’s fireside, in the mansion and in the cottage, in the garnished chamber of the wealthy, and in the humble and comfortless garret of the poor. It is a matter of every day’s occurrence, that he should be at home in all these varied scenes, and he acquires a tact in accommodating himself to them, and to the endless diversity of character which they present. Wherever he goes he enters the family circle, as I have before said, without that formality which attends the reception of other visitors. He is received ordinarily without any preparation, and at any hour when necessity calls for it. He sees his patients, too, in every variety of situation, and in just those circumstances which are calculated to develope and exhibit character. He sees them in their unguarded moments, and when sufferings and trials of every variety, from the great calamity down to the most trivial disappointment, are acting upon them as tests, searching and sure. He sees much that glitters before the world become the merest dross in the sick chamber; and he sees too the gold shining bright in the crucible of affliction. He sees human passion in every form and condition; implacable hatred and love stronger than death; fallen virtue, and virtue tried and proved; mental and moral strength inconceivable, and childish imbecility in the once mighty and great; hope beaming bright with heavenly lustre, and ghastly fear and black despair; unbounded power of endurance, and the crushing of the once buoyant spirit by even light calamities—every feeling, or passion, or quality, or condition, that can be imagined, in every possible variety of phase and degree, is displayed to his view.