Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 September 1878 — By No Means a Langhing Matter The Yellow-Fever Horror in Memphis. [ARTICLE]

By No Means a Langhing Matter The Yellow-Fever Horror in Memphis.

Memphia people »i«itinii Boetofi lenph nt the report* of the panic which the AMo-iMcd Preu haaaent North. They «ay thing* urn not nc»<rjy ao bed. The above, from a Boston paper, was sent to one of the -telegraph operatois employed h6re by the Western Union Telegraph Company, and by Mr. Catron, the local agent of the Western Associated Press, to whom he gave it, was handed to us. We would give worlds, had we them to give, to know the names of the Memphians, who, absenting themselves from their home from fear of the fever, mock at the pangs ami sufferings of 3,000 sink, laugh over the twelve hundred dead men, women and children who sleep in Elmwood and Calvary Cemeteries, and Potter’slicld, and deride the needy widows and orphans, and hungry, unemployed laborers, who clamor for the food doled out to them dav by day, the charity, not of Memphis people, who enjoy Boston and laugh over the press reports, but, thank God! of millions who never met any Memphians, but who are moved by the plain, simple, unvarnished statements of Mr. Catron, who, to our knowledge, has always been under rather than over the mark. Memphis people visiting Boston may laugh, but we, who are here, are daily, hourly, in tears for the manly men and saintly women, many of whom might have fled, but who preferred to share the fate of their humbler fellow-citizens, and have fallen in the cause of humanity. But there must be some mistake about it. Surely there is not one of all the thousands of Memphians who are safe from the pestilence that takes its hundreds per day or more, who would laugh over the reports, even though they were exagwhich they are not Surely there is not one so lost to shame, to the commonest decency, as to laugh while all the world is serious over our sorrow, and the open hand of charity ministers to our wants from all parts of the earth. To lose over 1,200 men, women and children in twentyseven days, out of a population of 15,000, white and black, and to be expending over SIO,OOO for 1,200 hurses and forty doctors, and for medicines and food for more than 8,000 sick and 10,000 indigent, is to us a sad reality, enough to move even a stone to tears. But, beside 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 appal the stoutest heart, and “give us pause” amid the general wreck and ruin. No pen can do these scenes and sights justice; no tongue exaggerate them. Lisping childhood, hoary and venerable old age, the ya-*’ grant and the merchant, the man of God and the unbeliever, all are taken, "all claimedalike by the awful pestilence. It thins all ranks, and brings sorrow to the mansion, the cottage and the cabin. 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 and 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. It has moved us to tears many a time the past

ten days, although we are not used to the melting mood. 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 has uncovered. Parents have deserted children, and children parents, husbands their wives y 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. Little children, clamoring for the food she could no longer give, have appealed to the dead mothey, who gave up her spirit as she gave birth to her last, in an agony of the feter. Ministers of the Gospel, carrying messages of peace, hurrying from house to house, have had their weary feet arrested and 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 kinfolk 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, Jhe 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 diedf” All day, and every hour of the day, this question is repeated, and the heart sickens at the report, 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 witfejear,-with a dread-that annihilation awaits us, and that w ; e are destluedwbo 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. t Hone we have none. We despair Ofany relief, but we are nerved for the end. We pray blessings upon the generous who have helped UB 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 tbit the names of the women 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-—Afempiis Appeal Cucumber Catsup.—Take overgrown cucumbers, before they turn yellow, peel, and grate on a very coarse, grater. Allow the pulp to drain-Ofr-a colander, then jjjft through a coarse sieve to separate the seeds. Half fill wide-mouthed bottles or preserving |ars With this pulp, and fill, up with good vinegar. When served, add salt and pepper. It has precisely the odor and flavor of fresh cucumbers, and makesan acceptable accompaniment —r - An English scientist, ib is said, has discovered that lying-produces a huskiness ot the throat,