One morning, on leaving his house for a visit to the hospital patients, some one wished to detain him, when he exclaimed, in terms more earnest than elegant,-- "Private patients may go to the devil" (or elsewhere, another reports), "but the poor fellows in the hospital I am bound to care for." To poor students whose funds were "doubtful," he presented free tickets to his college lectures, afterwards showing them marked attention. Everybody has heard of his rude kindness to a young fashionable miss, whom her mother took to Abernethy for treatment. It is said that the doctor ran a knife under her belt, in presence of the mother, instantly severing it, and exclaiming,-- "Why, madam, don't you know there are upwards of thirty yards of ----" (what are more elegantly termed bowels) "squeezed under that girdle? Go home, give nature fair play, and you'll have no need of a prescription." [Illustration: ABERNETHY'S SURGICAL OPERATION.] KINDNESS TO CLERGYMEN. "Cynics have been found in plenty to rail at physicians for loving their fees; and one might justly retort that the railers love nothing but their fees. Who does not love--and who is not entitled to--the sweet money earned by labor, be it labor of hand, brain, or cloth? One thing is sure--doctors are unpaid."--_A Lawyer._ The above kind-hearted physician, having attended the child of a clergyman's widow, without knowing her situation, returned all the fees he had received from her when he learned who she was, and added, in a letter, fifty pounds besides, with instructions to expend it in daily rides in the open air, for her health. To a clergyman he sent a receipt for his long services, and also enclosing ten pounds. The generosity of Dr. Wilson, of Bath (now deceased), has before been recorded. He had been attending a clergyman, who, Wilson had learned, was in indigent circumstances, and he afterwards sent fifty pounds in gold to the minister, by a friend. "Yes, I will take it to him to-morrow," said the gentleman. "O, my dear sir," exclaimed Dr. Wilson, "take it to him to-night. Only think of the importance to an invalid of one good night's rest." RARE CHARITY. Another case of "three pair, back," occurs in the memoirs of Dr. Lettsom, who is already made mention of in this work. On one of his benevolent excursions, the doctor found his way into the squalid garret of a poor old woman who had evidently seen better days. With the refined language and the easy deportment of a well-bred lady, she begged the physician to examine her case, and give her a prescription. (Alas! how often is poverty mistaken for disease, and does want foster malady!) But the kind doctor, after a careful inquiry, formed a correct diagnosis, and wrote on a slip of paper he chanced to have about him, the following brief note to the overseers of the parish:-- "A shilling per diem for Mrs. Moreton. Money, not physic, can cure her. LETTSOM."