There is not as much gratitude in the world as is commonly supposed. This is particularly true of the services of a physician. These are received by many, as a matter of course, as being something to which they have a sort of natural right. They seem to class them among the common blessings, such as air and water, for which, because they are so common, they have no idea of being grateful. Day after day, and week after week, they may be the objects of the physician’s most assiduous attentions, and his exertions may be blessed, and obviously so, to the preservation of life; but when health comes they will grudge him even the pittance of a half day’s labor from those hands to which his skill has restored strength, though they spend days and weeks every year in the most shiftless idleness. Quite a large proportion of the poor treat the physician in this way. An old physician of my acquaintance was used to say that there are three kinds of poor—the Lord’s poor, the devil’s poor, and poor devils; that is, the virtuous poor, the vicious poor, and those who are poor from sheer shiftlessness. The _virtuous_ poor are always grateful; and there are none among the wealthy upon whom the physician attends more cheerfully, than he does upon some of this class. Of his kind offices to them, and of their feelings in return to him, it can be said in the beautiful language of Scripture, ‘When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me it gave witness to me: because I delivered the poor that cried and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me; and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.’ As the physician goes his daily rounds, there is no one thing that so cheers him on in his course of toil and benevolence, as the gratitude of the virtuous poor. And if there will be tears shed at his death beyond the little circle of friends, in the very bosom of which he lives, _they_ will shed them profusely and long.