Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1878 — THE SOUTHERN PLAGUE. [ARTICLE]

THE SOUTHERN PLAGUE.

Deplorable Condition of Memphis. Moved by an incoiTect report that the Associated Press reports were exaggerating the deplorable state in Memphis, Tenn., the Appeal of that city, in its issue of the 10th inst. says: “To lose over 1,200 men, women and children in twenty-seven days, out of a population of 15,000, white and black, and to be expending over SIO,OOO for 1,200 nurses and 40 doctors, and for medicines, and food for more than 3,000 sick and 10,000 indigent, is to us a sad reality, enough to move even a stoic to tears. But besides this, there come the tales of individual sorrow; of whole families swept away in a week, leaving not even one of the name; of nurses dying at their posts; of priests and ministers and good sisters following those they succored so fast as to appall the stoutest heart and ‘ give us pause ’ amid the general wreck and ruin. No peo cando these scenes and sights justice; no tongue exaggerate them. Lisping childhood, hoary and venerable old age, the vagrant and the merchant, the plan of God and the unbeliever, all are taken, claimed alike by the awful pestilence. The cry of the fatherless is heard every hour, claiming the pity, the sympathy, and the tears of the most hardened veteran. In this office, as we write, there are but ' two left of all who a month ago were employed in the editorial, counting ami composing rooms, and our pressman is down with the fever. Strangers to the office, as to the business, are attending to our affairs, while the only editor left on duty alternates, through sixteen hours a day, between his desk and a case. This is our personal measure of the dreadful epidemic, and surely it is a sad one. Our experience is one we will never forget, and it is a common one. The fifth epidemic we have passed through, this surpasses them all in the horrors it lias uncovered. Parents have deserted children, and children parents, husbands their wives, but not one wife a husband. Men have dropped dead on the streets, while others have died neglected, only to be discovered by the death-spreading gases from their bodies. Ministers of the Gospel, carrying messages of peace, hurrying from house to house, have had their weary feet arrested ami their work stayed by the pestilence that walks in the noonday as at night. The priest administering the extreme unction, and the bride of Christ, wiping the deathdamp from the forehead of those whose friends and kin-folk are far away, are almost paralyzed in the sacred act, and die even before we know they are sick. The business of the hour is the succor of the sick, the burial of the dead, and the care of the needy living. The last words of those who are well are at night farewells to the dead, and the first in the morning, “Who lives’ and who has died ?’ All day, and every hour of the day, tliis question is repeated, and the soul grows weary over the repetition. And yet there is no relief nor any release. Worse and worse the epidemic has grown, until to-day it has capped the climax, and the hearts of the brave men who have stood in the breach are blanched with fear, with a dread that annihilation awaits us, and that we are destined to be blotted from the earth. Fear sits on every face and dread on every heart. We work not in the shadow, but in the very face of death. We meet him on every hand and at every moment in the names of his victims and in the desolation he has spread about us. Hope, we have none. We despair of any relief, but we are nerved for the end. We pray blessings upon the generous who have helped us in all the States; we pray for the safety of those who have come among us to nurse the sick and minister to the dying, and we ask that the names of the w omen and the men who have laid down their lives for us shall be handed down forever as among the brightest and the best of earth.”